Synners

26

Valjean finished singing and collapsed at the doctor's feet in a huddled pool of twitching patterns. It was the same tall doctor Gabe had just seen in Mark's pit arguing with Gina. Her face remained stubbornly impassive, even as she started to remove the cape and discovered the connections that Valjean had been so careful to camouflage running from the hardware in the collar to the sockets in his head. Gabe felt a wave of queasiness sweep through him as she bent down and instructed the semiconscious man to give the disconnect command.

Dinshaw nudged him, and he started guiltily; he had all but forgotten her. "Are you all right?" he asked her, but she waved the question away, pointing at the door. Manny was just coming out from the elevators, looking haggard and disheveled in a vague kind of way, as if he'd just been awakened from sleep.

Clooney rushed at him, starting to explain something about being the ranking employee and the call from Security bouncing to him because Manny had been unavailable. Manny seemed to endure Clooney without really listening, giving most of his attention to the doctor and the security guards. He turned briefly to look at Dinshaw, frowning when he saw Gabe standing beside her.

"You're probably going to get it for being on the scene again," Dinshaw said in a low voice. "How is it you always find your way up here when someone's going to jump?"

"Just lucky, I guess," Gabe said, feeling awkward. A guard came over to him with Valjean's cape and thrust it at him.

"Here. She's your friend, you give it to her."

Gabe didn't want to touch it. He balled it up quickly, making sure the connections that had been in Valjean's skull were well buried in the folds of material.

Dinshaw drew away a step, looking at it with distaste. "That's a real inspired piece of technology."

"Isn't it."

Clooney stalked past them looking miffed as the largest security guard eased Valjean's limp form over his shoulder and followed the doctor to the elevators.

"You weren't hurt, were you?" Manny asked Dinshaw. He was squinting at her strangely, as if he were trying to decide whether she was somehow at fault for all this.

Dinshaw shook her head.

"Good. That's good." He looked a bit puzzled as he went back inside. Gabe and Dinshaw stared after him.

"What's wrong with this picture?" Dinshaw said, rubbing her neck where Valjean had been gripping her.

"I don't know," Gabe said. He looked down at the cape. A last bit of residual energy sent a soft wave of grey through the white material, like an animal letting out a final breath.

White Lightning in a mason jar. If it worked once, it would work again. Except it didn't.

The level in the jar went down steadily, little by little, and it wouldn't come for her. It burned the way it was supposed to, but tonight she was fireproof.

Here it comes.

She tried to block the thought with another swig from the jar. Yah, and here this comes, now leave me alone.

Take a little walk-

– and here it comes-

Here this comes. Shut up, motherfucker. Too hard, it was too fucking hard to think about.

– a little walk with me-

– into the context-

Context this. The jar was half-gone now, and she felt nothing, nothing, nothing. The kid with the heelprint on his forehead was jumping again tonight. Christ, didn't he have someplace else to go, something else to do?

"We do"-dit, dit, dit-"what we do. We do it"-dit, dit, dit-"because we can."

Gina put her hand down on the sticks, capturing them. Flavia waited a moment and then slid them out again to play the edge of the table.

"Know what you're looking for. Know it." Flavia pushed the mason jar aside. "Know you through the wire, know you for always."

Gina pulled the mason jar back in front of her and held onto it. "I don't think you're fucking ready to know me tonight."

That sharp-enough-to-cut grin. "Toxed enough yet?"

She shook her head slowly. "Not toxed at all. Should've known it would happen someday. I passed the saturation point, can't put a load on anymore. The only thing to do is get myself Purged and start over quick. Before the odometer hits six zeroes."

"Sure." Flavia whacked her on the cheek with one of the sticks. "Feel that?"

Gina gave a short, surprised laugh. "No."

"Toxed enough." Flavia beckoned to someone behind her. "Ready. A little traveling music, please."

Don't do it, she told them as they took her out. Don't fucking do it, crushed in the back of the rental with Claudio and his magic fingers. We do what we do, we do it because we can, don't do it, she said as they took her down into the cellar. Don't do it, Claudio laying her down on the mattress, arranging her comfortably, pausing to kiss her on the mouth. Struck by White Lightning, hope you like your barbecue extra-crispy. Don't do it. The connections were ready in Flavia's practiced hands. Don't do it, she said. Last time: don't do it.

Then they did it.

The brain feels no pain, Good God, y'all, can you believe with me?

They said they could. Claudio's magic fingers, the Fender in Dorcas's grip, Tom holding on to the phantom train, and Flavia beating, beating, beating.

Well, you got it, it's totally painless, but they never mentioned it would feel like painlessly driving eight nails through your head going in and painlessly ripping your arms and legs off coming out again. And they only mentioned what you'd gain, they never mentioned what you'd lose, they never got to that, and what the fuck, even you can't tell sometimes. Right. Because we do what we do, we do it because we can… but do you know what you can do?

You can do this-

– take a little walk with me-

A little way, a long way, invaded, visited, and then left; walk all night, and then run and run and run until you forget. Were you running from something or to it?

Struck by White Lightning. Hope you like your barbecue extra-crispy. (She thought she heard someone yell in pain, but that was ridiculous, that couldn't have been. The brain felt no pain.)

You be the ass to risk. Ever done that? It goes something like this-

But Flavia was already tearing at her, whacking her across the face with the sticks to bring her out of it even as Claudio's magic fingers plucked the wires from her head and threw them down. Flavia yanked her to a sitting position.

"Hey, you. Get her out."

Deja-voodoo. "How the fuck did you find me?" she said.

"Why didn't you wait for me?" Ludovic's face was pained. "Why didn't you come to me?"

"You ask a lot of questions for someone with holes in his head. Hotwire."

He carried her out.

– -

Fez's smile was tired. He was sitting alone in the work island Rosa had set up with Percy directly in front of the screens, which were all dark now. It was some indecent hour of the morning, four maybe, and the inn was dead quiet, except for the faint sound of some hard-core party animals, probably Rude Boys, carrying from somewhere farther up the Mimosa.

"What are you doing here?" she said.

He yawned. "Research. I just wanted a little privacy."

"Oh. Sorry. I'll get out of your face." She turned to go back to her squat.

"No, it's all right. I think I've found out everything I need to know." He jerked his head at her. "Come here. You'll be interested in this."

She sat down on the floor next to him, yawning and wiping her watering eyes. "I don't vouch for my ability to know anything at this hour, but whack it anyway."

He gave her a look. "Going native?"

"Fuck, no." She blinked at the screen of the laptop on the crate in front of him. "Sixteen perfect screens, and you're using Rosa's laptop?"

"I didn't want to put this up where everyone could see it."

She studied the screen for several seconds until she realized it was something from MedLine. "God, I can't read this. It's got words like oedema and homonymous hemianopia in it." She paused as the words sank in, and suddenly she was wide awake. "Hemianopia. That's a visual deficit usually caused by a stroke. You don't see stuff on the left side or the right, depending on which hemisphere of the brain is involved." She looked at Fez. "Oedema is the antiquated spelling of edema-"

"Thank you, I know," Fez said grimly. "Secondary swelling after a stroke."

"Who?" she asked.

"A rather disturbing number of people who have sockets. And not just strokes. Other neurological disorders, too. Seizures, sudden onset of multiple sclerosis, Huntington's chorea, Parkinson's-" Fez frowned. "Not enough Parkinson's cases, actually, to be significant." He blew out a breath. "The vast majority seem to be strokes of varying severity, and seizures. But the number of brain tumors ought to be ringing somebody's fire bell, and I don't think it is."

"All from sockets?" Sam asked, feeling her stomach turn over.

"They say there's absolutely no physical evidence connecting sockets to any of this," he said, scrolling the dense text forward several lines. "If you can believe them. They're calling it a 'statistically correct sampling of the populace,' unquote, mentioning other factors such as the effects of mutagens from environmental poisoning in the last century."

"We didn't kick you in the head, your grandparents did," Sam said.

Fez gave her shoulders a squeeze. "That's my Sam-I-Am."

"I'm not yours," she snapped.

He blinked at her in surprise for a moment, and then his face took on a wary look. "This is not the time to be mad at me, Sam."

"I know." She could feel her face getting warm. Great; she was blushing. She only did that maybe once in two or three blue moons, and it had to be now. She gave an awkward shrug. "Hey, I'm trying to be a grown-up. I don't do so bad most of the time."

He was looking back and forth, from the screen to her, caught between the two, and she wanted to kick herself. Something big and bad was happening, and she had to give herself away by getting pissy over a casual remark she'd heard from him a hundred times before.

"Anything I say to you is going to sound lame," he said after a few moments. "I can tell you, 'Sam, you're very young, and I'm a broken-down old wreck' or 'Jesus, Sam, why, you're young enough to be my granddaughter, it's too indecent,' and we both know the meanest Hollywood hack could probably write better dialogue."

She laughed a little in spite of everything. "Forget about it. I'm sorry. I make a shitty fugitive, and I make a shitty Mimosan, and sometimes I'm a shitty friend, too."

"It's a shitty world," Fez said lightly, and they laughed together.

"I'm sorry," she said again, sobering. "It is a shitty world. What about this? Is anyone doing anything?"

"Not as far as I can tell. They're slowing down doing the procedure in some places, and a new clinic in Schenectady that was supposed to open has been delayed. Every single case was reported to be neurologically sound before and after the sockets were put in."

"Then it's something going into the sockets," Sam said. "I mean, assuming it isn't twentieth-century mutagens."

"Well, you're not a shitty thinker, whatever else you may be. But according to this nothing like neurotransmitter is going into anyone's sockets. It's all just entertainment stuff-rock videos, Hollywood releases. Commercials."

"Commercials would do it-" She stopped. "Art told me way back when that Visual Mark could possibly have a stroke in the future. If he's among the cases, that's stone-home evidence they knowingly implanted sockets into the head of someone who was already manifesting a problem."

Fez went back several screens and scanned a list of names. "Not here," he said after a moment. "Even if he was, we'd go to jail proving it. Receiving stolen meds."

"I'd cut a deal. It would be worth it." She looked at him. "Hell, I'll go to jail. You stay here, have fun." She paused. "I mean, this is not my favorite place I've ever lived."

"I knew what you meant," Fez said serenely, going back to the screen he'd been looking at. "The thing to do right now, I think, is give this to Art and let him run with it. If it means anything at all, he'll figure it out."

"You have a lot of faith in him." Sam sighed. "Actually, that's what I was going to suggest. Art can get around the system, find out all kinds of things. Between him and us we may be able to figure it out. It sure worked before. I just don't know where we'll hide out this time."

Fez gave her a puzzled frown. "Pardon?"

"It just seems like every time Art makes some kind of big discovery, we end up wanted for questioning."

"Only once, Sam."

"See? A definite pattern." She wiped a hand over her face. "Shit, I'm tired." Fatigue had suddenly resettled itself on her like some tremendous roosting animal. "And I have to go to the bathroom. Pardon me while I go get my little pail and shovel to play in the sand. Don't worry, I'll bury it deep so it won't kill anybody." She got up clumsily and started away.

Fez caught her hand. "Maybe sometime we can sit down in my apartment-my new apartment, wherever and whenever that may be-and I can try to explain some of the things I want. And if things had broken just a little bit differently, who's to say? But I've always taken you seriously, Sam. In case you had any doubt."

She nodded tiredly. "That's okay. Just-" she shrugged. "Next lifetime, let's get it right." She staggered off in search of toilet paper.

He was in a sort of rest/sleep mode when he first sensed it.

A presence and not a presence, it seemed as if it were calling to him in a way, signaling, beckoning, from somewhere within the Diversifications system.

At first he thought it was Gina, coming on-line to be with him after all, but as he sensed more of it, he realized there was nothing of her in it. Abruptly he flashed on the idle meat, still in the pit. The records said it had disconnected and taken itself home, but it was really still there. Records were easy to manipulate, and he'd tried to keep them as normal looking as possible, so as not to let anyone know he wasn't actually disconnecting at all. The prospect of returning to the meat, of being weighted down, was less appealing all the time.

He wished he had some way of getting the meat to operate at least briefly on its own, without him right there to control it. Then it could disconnect, walk around, go home, and come back. The doctors would accept such a performance as normal, just as they had accepted the little show he had put on for them earlier. After all, they were still busy processing the hordes of Diversifications employees, the social-expression composers, the hardware designers, the administrative people, and the fabled Upstairs Team. Meat was easy to bamboozle. It had to expend so much energy and attention just dragging itself around that it tended to miss a lot.

In the midst of his ruminations on the meat problem, he felt the thing again, no closer but somehow stronger. From Rivera's area, he realized. His attention blinked into existence there, and without warning it went for him.

It was a voracious thing, mindless under a facade that was vaguely like himself; impressions of old sensations, pain, compulsion, the old drive toward oblivion. Juggernaut, wanting to devour and to infiltrate, rape, merge. There was a blip of consciousness or near consciousness to it, a shadow of consciousness all destructive in its makeup, and yet no more deliberately evil than cobra venom. It knew nothing else, and in a way it knew nothing at all, except that it would do what it would do.

He almost got away; it almost got him.

Both, for some infinitesimal measure of time (damned Schrodinger world)-he was feeling himself being reeled into it and watching from a safe distance as it moved along each new item in the review queue, sowing itself in little flashes of yellow, in a driving beat-

He flickered away to the meat and tuned in the brain like a small, feeble radio.

The brain was still running, but it had a new balkiness. He could not have depended on it to work a routine; it would have garbled each line in the act of reading it.

Abrupdy he realized that if he could have removed this new shell of garbled operation, he would have something very similar to the thing sitting in Manny Rivera's area working away on the items in the frozen release queue.

In the meat-vernacular, I stroked out on them, he thought, almost wonderingly.

It had been coming for a long time. The flashing lights, the floating sensation. From Medical's area he got the term trans-ischemic attack and the knowledge that they had known all along, since the night they'd grabbed the hacker, and they'd just pumped some antistroke medication into the meat during the detox and called it their best try and hoped that the sockets would help him.

Poor meat. Nobody cared. Not even me.

It hadn't really been a very big stroke. If he'd still been inside the meat, he would have been up and walking around, a little more vague than usual, a little more argumentative, talking crazy shit when he talked at all, and nobody would have noticed anything out of the ordinary about that.

You were good at that. Talking crazy shit and video. What made America great.

The problem was, the meat was going to stroke out again, any time now, and when it did, that would be the big one, and as long as the wires were in the head, that meant the big one-the Big One-would charge right out of the meat, into the wires, into the system, where the little one was already waiting, and if-no, when-the two of them got together, they'd make something that couldn't be called a stroke, not anymore. Something like an unguided missile, a loose cannon rolling through the system, and when it found a receptor site, someone on-line with sockets-

Gina? Gina?

Her console was off, her pit empty, stone-home cold and dead, like she was never coming back.

Ludovic was gone, too. He turned a facet of his attention briefly to the top-down graphing of their respective worldlines. He couldn't be sure that they were together now, but it seemed more likely than not.

He flickered on Medical, but there was no one there, either. Dammit, what time was it? The middle of the night.

The kid in the penthouse.

– -

Rivera had been right about one thing, Keely thought woozily. The good stuff didn't make you as sick. Or sick at all. He looked over at the antique liquor cabinet gaping open. Booze had never been his particular preference; it was like using a shotgun to pick off a mosquito, or maybe putting yourself in a trash compactor to swat a fly on your nose, too broad-spectrum. On the other hand, there was something to be said for being broad in the spectrum. He had climbed into that old trash compactor and found that it sure did the fucking job. Maybe not too visual, but it was getting the fucking job done that counted.

And that was a big fucking job, after the message from Rivera. It was still on the screen across from where he was sitting on the couch with the bottle trapped between his thighs. I know you cracked my system. Damage nowhere near as great as you anticipated. I'll be up to look into the final disposal of your case tomorrow. You can expect the worst, if you like.

Son of a bitch must have gotten all his joints loosened to be that blatant, Keely thought, taking another swig from the bottle. Probably wouldn't do any good to try pointing out he wasn't the only hacker in the world, anyone could have been fucking around and managed to crack in and stone his crows. Could even have been his own little on-line net-pal, Visual Mark, cavorting out of his box.

The message on the screen flickered and then disintegrated. "Speak of the devil," Keely muttered as the familiar partial room appeared, the clouds rushing like a hurricane was imminent.

"Tell me you're awake!" Mark said, jacking the volume up all the way.

Keely staggered over and fell into the chair in front of the screen. "Sh. The grown-ups are all asleep." He leaned his face heavily on his hand. "Say, you been up to some dirty tricks in Manny Rivera's private computer."

"No time to talk. Listen for it: you're free."

Keely listened. Somewhere in another part of the penthouse, there was a series of small clicks. The door. He swiveled around drunkenly, expecting to see Manny Rivera marching into the room with a flat smile on his face. Decided this couldn't wait till tomorrow. Got a court order to drill your skull; go along quietly with the nice people waiting outside, and there won't be any trouble. But no one came in, nothing happened at all. He turned back to the screen.

"Did you just unlock the door?" he asked, laughing a little.

"Yes. I want you to leave here, go down to my simulation pit and yank the connections out of my head."

"Come on," Keely said, waving a hand clumsily. "You can do that yourself, I know how it works. You just think 'disconnect' or 'quit' or something."

"My meat won't do it, and I can't make it work from this side. You-"

"What side?"

"On-line. From inside the system. I'm not in the meat anymore, I told you, I got out of my box-"

"Yah, you sure did," Keely said, sloppily jovial. "I bet that was you, messing around with Rivera's shit, fucking with this and that. That son of a bitch doesn't know about you, he thinks I did it. Whatever you did. What'd you do, anyway?"

"I just looked," Mark said irritably. "What's the matter with you?"

"Not a fucking thing. I am toxed on the Upstairs Team's private label. They may be a retrograde bunch of cocksuckers, but they sure can pick 'em. Ain't plotzed once in fucking hours of straight drinking."

"You don't have to be detox for this," Mark said hurriedly. "Just get out, go to my pit-"

"And where is your pit?" Keely asked, yawning.

"On sixteen. Last one on the left at the end of the hall as you come out of the elevators. My body'll be there-"

"But your mind flies free." Keely gestured dramatically. "Isn't that right?"

"Get on the elevator, go down to the sixteenth floor. I'll unlock the pit door, all you have to do is push it open, walk in, take the connections, and yank them out of my head."

"That," Keely said, leaning forward to peer closely at the monitor, "would probably smart a whole fucking shitload. Probably stroke you out, maybe even kill you. Assuming I could get them out. Why don't you just nip in from your side and trash your console? That'll shut it off, and it'll be like the same thing, the connections'll deactivate."

The image on the screen froze, and Keely had the definite feeling his net-pal was no longer with him. But he'd left his calling card, or maybe his bookmark was more like it, so he had to be coming back. He could drink while he waited. Keely took another swig and then put his head down on the desk beside the keyboard.

After a little while he realized he was looking at a laptop that had been bolted into the desk with a bunch of add-ons. Son of a bitch-if he did want to walk right out his allegedly unlocked door, he could just rip this little piece right out of the desk and have himself info-to-go, see-you-later-data, juice-on-the-loose…

"I can't," Mark's voice said, startling him out of the half stupor he'd fallen into. Keely pushed himself upright and stared blearily at the screen.

"You can't what?"

"I can't get at my console. It was a good idea, and I should have thought of it earlier myself, but it's too late. It's there. It got out of Rivera's area, and it found the meat. Now all it has to do is wait for it to stroke out big. Hell, maybe it's going to make the meat stroke out big."

"What the fuck are you talkin' now," Keely said, trying to keep his eyes open. "Who's strokin' who?"

The voice in the speaker became one with the buzz rising in his own head as whatever Mark was trying to explain slid all over him and fell off. He must have thought it was pretty important, though; every time he opened his eyes, Mark was still there on the screen, saying, "One more time. I'll tell you one more time, and you answer me…"

The kid obviously wasn't used to alcohol. Young people, Mark reflected sourly. They'd always had it too clean, too efficient, even in their drugs. They took stuff that did one thing, or one other thing, and it was all a terribly neat way to get toxed. Sharpshooters; they couldn't stand up to the old cannonball.

That was the way it was with everything, he thought as he tried to get the kid to rouse for a third time. The dataline was just as particularized, a variety of channels but no variety within channels, organized right down to the bedrock beyond which no further organization was possible, and that was fine as long as nothing ever changed. But if something came along and played fifty-two pickup with all that rigorously organized data, it was shit-outa-luck time, too many fragments scattered in too many directions; total collapse. Like the booze in the kid passed out in front of the monitor. Mark could hear him snoring into the phone speaker. He could also see him if he wanted to, through the cam hidden in the chandelier, but it was a lousy angle.

He sounded five sharp tones on a high frequency that corresponded to fingernails on a chalkboard, a real teeth-grinder. There was a hitch in the kid's snoring, and then it resettled into normal rhythm.

"That's just great, kid!" Mark bellowed at him. No response. How many fucking nights had the kid let the liquor supply just sit, and then he had to pick tonight. He should have figured, he should have graphed the kid's movements.

He should have graphed himself. Then he might have seen it all coming, including the release of the infection from his own sad meat. He blipped his awareness briefly around the net to check on its status. No change in the last fifteen minutes, but that wasn't necessarily good news.

It was waiting for him in the console in his own pit, in Gina's, in Gabe Ludovic's, in Manny Rivera's, in all the pits, and at every possible contact point for Security and Medical. Security was unaware, but then, it wasn't meant for them. They'd been using the system all night with no problem. It was waiting for him to try to make contact, even just by producing a false alarm. He could have stationed his attention in the Security area indefinitely, coexisting with it unaffected, unless he executed any series of actions, and then it would take him. And if it took him, he wouldn't have to wait for the Big One to surge up out of the meat. He would be the Big One himself.

He had watched it make its way through the net, following almost the same paths he'd taken when he'd first gone exploring, seeding itself. There seemed to be a kind of tropism at work, as if he were drawing it to himself. Not surprising- it was the stroke he was supposed to have had, and he'd had it and not had it at the same time. Schrodinger's stroke. The meat had stroked out, but he was separated from it, and that wasn't the natural order of things, as far as the stroke was concerned; it wasn't meaning to spare him.

So it was coming for him, following his own trail as well as it could. There had been a few missteps, but as it spread, it had become more precise, more knowledgeable. It was almost as if the passage of time had stopped for him, just to allow something else to catch up, to reach his level of experience. He was still beyond it, but it was progressing steadily. Not much longer before it discovered the penthouse, and the outside phone line he'd found for the kid, going to waste now while he snored in a stupor. If it had been less prone to error, it might have found the penthouse already, but then error had a great deal to do with the very nature of a stroke. Perhaps he could attribute the coexistence of that fact with his present situation to circumstantial dumb luck.

Must remember always to try to program a little circumstantial dumb luck into every routine from now on, he thought. But first, must figure out the program for circumstantial dumb luck.

Right. If it found the penthouse before he could rouse the lad, he'd be cut off from the last person who could possibly keep the Big One from getting out of the meat and into the system. He'd just have to leave by the outside line and hope he could find some place in the bigger system that was safe before it followed him out-

It's already out there. In the video.

It was anywhere the video was. And the video had been in general release for… a week? Longer?

He beeped the console on the frequency of a boat horn, five sharp blasts. "Wake up, goddammit!"

The kid stirred and almost came to. But he couldn't wait any longer. Either he remained confined and waited for it to catch up with him, or he took his chances in the larger system.

If he stayed, perhaps he could confine it with himself in Diversifications' system. Except for what was already out.

No. Maybe he wasn't noble enough, or moral enough, or enough of anything to sacrifice himself. And that wouldn't work anyway, he realized, because once it got him, it would get all of his intelligence, his consciousness, everything, and it wouldn't just be smart anymore. It would be alive.

He stayed only long enough to throw together a fast routine, an alarm loop the kid could deactivate when he came to, which would trigger an interactive message. If the virus found the penthouse before the kid woke up, there wouldn't be any message, but it was that chance, or no chance.

He kicked the loop into motion. Five piercing whistles. "Get up, goddammit, the sky is falling!"

Then he was out.