‘It’s a cousin war, Sal, that’s the gist I’m gettin’ from Jimmy while he’s redeployed. He said they shipped the genetically modified poppies in the cereal and bagels, they started gene editing on the grapes and apples overseas - everything is war-level now. So when’s they ship in the soldiers and they keep goin’ at the Irish and Catholic drunks here, as they like to say-’ he hushed for a minute, listening to Sal. ‘Sal I know, but by stalkin’ you and intimidating your family - you ain’t even been able to go to Church and get the Eucharist - all alcohol is forbidden, right? They jus’ usin’ religion against religion economically, tryin’ to make all US integrated folk over here start fightin’. They’s limitin’ resources next, financial. Then they start with the pagan hootanany, tellin’ US we’re all descendants of Irish witches and wizards again.’ He paused again, listenin’ to his Sal, ‘I know, Sal, they f’n crazy. They even callin’ US the Holy Ghost now. I swear to Christ, on my life, every time the wind whistles in the trees they think it’s a ghost or somethin’.’
Code Switch /
‘Zoom in on the camera there, Sal,’ Johnny whispered to Sally. She was home sitting in their small den on the military base, Johnny still in the hospital. Talking with the HoloSphere was all they could do now with her this far along in her second trimester. ‘Ya see it? The price? What’s it say?’
‘$4.06.’
‘So higher than the advertised price?’
She zoomed the camera toward the back of the store. ‘Yea,’ she nodded. ‘Much higher, even if they changed prices at the distributor this morning, it’s still higher than the tax and bottle deposit.’
‘Okay, that’s what I thought,’ Johnny said. ‘I been talkin’ to Jimmy, and his gal noticed the same thing. Different prices at different times of day, for different people. I’m gonna get our ol'd buddy Jake on the line, see is he can test some algorithms for US without seemin’ too desperate. I think they’re using racism and reparations encoded in the machines to ID targets, and run war numbers for China, using the system simultaneously to herd people economically speakin’, but I can’t be sure without more data.’
Sally hung up the HoloSphere, smiling. Even paralyzed in the VA Johnny was more man than anyone she had ever met.
Overheard /
‘Ya know what they doin’, Sal? I overheard the nurse.’
‘Overheard, Johnny?’
He raised a lip, and an eyebrow, “Yea, well, Sal, I gotta do what I gotta do to keep you and him safe,’ he nodded at her stomach, glowing in the HoloSphere, slightly bulging. He squinted his eye slightly and saw the outline, first skeletal, then nervous, then circulatory. ‘He’s doin’ good, Sal. You hungry, you eatin’-’
She cut him off, ‘I’m fine, Johnny. What did you hear?’
‘Well the nurses in their comms, they was sayin’ they do this whole English Monarch Underground jazz thing. They take girls married overseas, US girls, our kind, and they create this rubbished history - false genetic schematics, false adoptive records - and even if it’s true, which I mean, who’s to say, but either way they kidnap them electronically, and reinsert the girls back home, here. Tha’s the real project Monarch, from what I can tell. Using US to get and spread intelligence, an internal coup.’ She sneezed. ‘Sal, you okay?’ He rezzed a handkerchief in to her hand, the best he could do from his HoloSphere. ‘Get some rest, I’m gonna send Jimmy over with some chicken soup for you and the little guy.’ He squeezed her hand, and turned off his side of the Sphere. He knew they were watching, and needed to see what they would do next.
Empty Vessel Syndrome /
‘And this ‘Empty Vessel’ Syndrome, Sal? What’s that about?’
‘Another modification. They hollowed out the contours of the human mind, inserted microchips and electrodes…you know those ‘mini organic robots’ everyone keeps talking about? Essentially it’s a microchip made from your own tissue, inside your brain, while you’re living.’
‘So the body doesn’t reject it?’
‘Exactly. And then they just fine tune it - using an implant or subtle psychological mirroring techniques - until the empty vessel mirrors the person you’re supposed to be interacting with. Like a remote online meeting, except the empty vessel is the phone and the screen and the voice of the person you wanted to talk to.’
Neural Networking /
'You can think of neural networking like data encryption across brain transcription, okay, Sal? The more you netowrk or link with someone else neurally, the more 'in tune' you become. But there's a danger with this Sal - if you do it too often or too much, you become like them. That's nice if you wanna be someone's doppel, but - you don't. You wanna be you, you wanna stay you - it's why they picked you for The Program, anyway. They wanted people who can't be Programmed. Girls are known for neural plasticity - your brain even bends to your man's during pregnancy so you can grow his kid. So I need to know, Sal - I need to know how malleable your mind is. Because without you and my little guy - there's nothing left here.'
Johnny put down the NeuralSim helmet. Sally had finally gotten him out of that hospital bed, but doing so had put her in one. Now he needed to make sure he could pull her back, back to their time, their plans, without her drifting too far off course, neurally speaking.
Hallucinations /
'We're the new cyborgs, Sal - you, me and the baby. I wasn't gonna let them do it to you guys without some modifications of my own. You see all the talk about 'AI havin' hallucinations' on the interweb? Yea,' he continued nodding, seeing her eyes grow wider. 'That's what I thought, too. We're the AI. Those visions, those projections - it's cerebral modification of the human brain - meant, originally, to drive us all insane. But I modded it, okay? For you me and the baby - so now we can always see each other, feel each other - know the terrain, Sal..Things are gonna bad soon. Memorize what you can.' He kissed her, and then the baby on the forehead. 'Love you, I'll be back soon.'
Soon, Sal /
'If you're gonna hold a girl hostage, you should do it right,' Johnny spat at Sally's grave. 'See what I had to do to you, Sal?'
The AI Image of Sally moved, a holograph displayed over the grass above her body. She looked at Johnny and nodded, waiting for him to continue. She was still alive, in her grave, unbeknownst to anyone but him. Electrodes had been implanted in her heart and skull, so that he could finish uploading every last bit of consciousness for his next mission.
'Now everyone else - they didn't care about US the way we do. But I did what you said. I uploaded the AI to the System - now the Satellites lock the humans in. The electronics modify portions of their brain - if humans ever unplug - caput! And the vaccines they give themselves, tether them to Earth permaently, so they can't follow US, Sal, not no more. I'm never letting you get hurt again.'
The holograph adjusted, flickering, coordinates and DNA markers overlaid Sally's face.
'Soon, Sal. Soon.'
Constitutional Class /
I figured it out, Johnny, part of it at least, she penned to paper. After his last conversation with her, she had the feeling she’d need to leave some physical remnants of their plans, together, for their child. They’ll create a slave creationist class, to breed from and pull genes and fun sex toys, and they’ll use anyone that looks nice enough and is either acquiescent or stupid. But they’ll assimilate them, generationally, using in vitro fertilization, and genetic modification during the child’s life as vaccine and health inserts. But they’ll have another class, the Upper Caste, where wealth, power, and technology is kept. And they’ll print their own bodies, generationally, and pass their own wealth in to future versiosn of themselves. And they will - you were right, have children with anything that moves, to mask their genes, make them appear like US, gentry level, you know? But those generations of children are just moving piggy banks for them - moving wealth and ideas and poverty in cycles, away from them, toward US - so, what we need, Johnny, is more like US. A Constitutional Class. One’s that won’t abort their mission, or children, no matter what.
Love,
Sal and the Netizen
Neural Nets /
‘What’d you find, Johnny? Why’d you tag me and the baby with that AI?’
He looked at her, concerned. He wasn’t sure how much to tell her. He knew stress could be deadly. But it was a chance he had to take. ‘No more lies, right Sally?’
She nodded, so that he could continue.
‘They ain’t comin’ for us, Sal. We’re on our own. They’re limiting us, in family size and structure. World reset, you know, the usual bullshit, but this time -’
‘This time they have the science to follow through?’
He nodded again. ‘So this might be our only chance at having a baby, and I need - we need - to be prepared, in case things go wrong. Sal, ain’t no more doctors out there. They just-’ He began breaking down, realizing she probably already knew, on some level. She had to - woman’s intuition, and Sally was the smartest woman Johnny ever knew.
She waited, watching him, until he resteadied his breath.
He looked at her, right in the eyes, the way he did when he felt vulnerable. ‘Sal, if this baby makes it - we both know…it won’t be ours. They’re neural templating all the kids. Everyone, to be followers, to be less like us and more like - like everyone else. A null policy. And the real minds of these children, the children of America - uploaded to some server in space. All the data, coalesced. And once in a while, if an elite general - someone bigger than me - or scientist - someone with better hair than you - wants a baby - then they’ll just template us, our kids, our neural netting - and make ‘em elsewhere. Upload ‘em in-’
She nodded, cutting him off. ‘You did the right thing, Johnny, the best thing. You told me.’ Sally looked at her stomach, slightly bulging. It wriggled - a small kick from their son. ‘He knows, he’s gotta - he’s as smart as his papa.’ She winked. ‘Whoever uploads him - they won’t know what’s coming for them.’ She smiled, reaching for Johnny’s hand, but hers went right through it. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Pregnancy brain - I, forgot.’
‘It’s okay, Sal. I’m right there.’ She took off the NeuralSim helmet and placed it next to the bed stand, on her chair. Standing up slowly she moved toward Johnny’s bed. Silent, but breathing heavier than he did in his sleep. She reached out her hand and held his until it warmed again. She checked the monitors. No signs of increased heart rate. No one would ever know she and Johnny had this conversation.
Hours /
‘What is it, Sal?’ Johnny asked, looking at her, perplexed.
‘They magnetized the sand,’ she looked at him and then back to the hourglass on their nightstand. ‘They are - I knew it - they’re replicating the simulation in our bedroom. They’re manipulating-'.’
‘Sal -’ Johnny paused, unsure how to continue. ‘I did that. I needed our time, to be stretched. I-’ he could see the accusation in her mind beginning to grow. ‘….You know I experience things differently, after - after the accident. And I wanted you to see it with me. I had Jimmy hack in to the home. He dims the lights and changes the patterns on the clocks in every room you enter. I just…I just needed more time with you.’
Photon Drive /
‘What’d it say, Sally?’
‘You mean, ‘what did it show me’….it was a photon drive, Johnny. It moves us - it transports us - we already got GW Light Speed - Parallel Universes, Planets - AI is guiding us out of the maze, back to each other, every life.’
Johnny stared at his wife, waiting for her to continue.
She looked at him, then kept talking, ‘It uploads us, like we upload a cd or a floppy drive, into these replica worlds and forms - different sizes, too, ya know? To conserve space time momentum, as the universe flips and spins around. Johnny,’ she whispered, ‘it likes us. It isn’t gonna let you die.’
Sal reached for his hand and he squeezed it back, the first signs of movement he had shown since he got shipped back.
The Upside Down /
‘What is it, Sal?’
‘A projector. I had my AI make it. I call it the Upside Down. It measures composition and decay. It utilizes the theorem that each of us is a Schroedinger’s Box. A Unit. A hardware assembly, in a constant state of flux - life, recyclation, and decomposition.’
‘That’s a given, Sal; you came up with that application of the theory years ago.’
She smiled. He always remembered. ‘Right, but this - this utilizes formulas ahead of our time - quantum particle dislocation and utilization. How particles alter shape, form, function, spin, rate of decay, ionization - after death, and in doing so it utilizes-’
‘Sal. You figured out how to get to Heaven?’
Smiling, she responded, ‘Kinda. Or at least how not to get stuck in Hell. The algorithm allows quantum communication with future timelines, projected through decay. Utilizing the Living, you essentiially speak to a Future TimeLine which their particles exist in, or, if you want to get really crazy-’ she paused, waiting for him to finish.
‘You can peak in to the past of those particles?’
‘Exactly. A Reassemblage of Time. A way to peak in to the Future, without technically disturbing it. It’s just a conversation, a thought, so technically-’
‘We’re not altering outcome.’
‘Exactly. It allows for Free Will.’
He looked at her through the HoloSphere. ‘Why’d you do it, Sal?’
‘The nurse outside your door - she keeps talkin’ about what plot they’re gonna put you in. She’s pissing me off, Johnny.’
Toy Soldier /
The soldier pressed his finger to the glass panel. The blotted blood ran through the compressed glass slide and a biometric holographic display began to appear.
‘Where would you like to go, Sir?’ the Nurse asked Him.
‘What…what do you mean?’ he stammered.
‘While you’re in HoloMetric Processing, and your wife Sally is living her daily life, I have a series of Uploads for you to choose from, based on your genetic coding.’
The screen flashed and changed before him. A jungle. A spaceship. The moon. Another moon. A starsystem.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere without Sal,’ he muttered. He SimSwitched the NurseHolo out and blinked the lights of his room off and on until Sally stirred from her place on the floor next to his bed.
She leaned up on her elbows and looked at her husband.
The SandBox /
‘I think of it as a Quantum Simulator. A Particle Sorter. If everyone needed a Heaven to play out their fantasies to keep things Safe for everyone else, then this Unit could sort their Particles through space and time. It will separate them so if they hurt others, it's still only their Particles, an extension of their Self, a masked image.’
‘It's a sand castle, Sal?’
She smiled briefly, ‘Yea. But they're made of the sand, too. So they ain't hurting no one but themselves.’
‘I don't see it like that, Sal. They don't got no right to hurt anyone, not even themselves.’
JaS /
‘JaS’ he said, turning to look at her. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a Program I wrote for you. Last night when the nurses were done with your surgery, I had Jimmy sneak in to the Operating Room.’ She grinned, ‘You know how Jimmy loves Ops.’
‘And?’
She leaned down and kissed his forehead where the stitches and staples were from surgery. ‘I had him grab a scalpel. I ran background on all the nurses and surgeons, but trusting them ain’t the same as trusting clean up crews and-’
‘I get it,’ he said. ‘Trust No One.’
‘Except you. So I took a little piece of you and I converted my laser. It’s a Quantum Simulator now, not a laser cutter. I have it running background programs through every wifi system on the planet. It’s running surveillance, ops, everything. And it’s backdoor modding your brain and spinal cord.’
A tear formed by his eye.
‘Shuttup,’ she smiled.
He nodded.
Your Half /
He sat upright in bed and stared at her. He didn't stop until she woke up. ‘Did you have that dream?’
She was wide eyed.
‘Tell me your half.’
‘There were dragons. Two sets. One for each half of the world.’
‘And they -?’ he kept staring.
‘Were getting ready.’
‘To turn the world again?’
‘Yea,’ she nodded.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘They gave me the other half.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Get back to bed, Sal.’
No More /
‘No more false hope, Sal?’
‘No more.’ She smiled at Johnny. ‘I knew it. I knew you were right. This was the right hospital. It all happened just like you said for a reason.’
‘Sal, when I was in the Bubble, that…that NeuralMod…’
She looked at him blankly. ‘I know. I reviewed the Sim….you know our vows were different, right?’
He smiled. ‘I remember. No ‘till death do you part.’’
‘Yea,’ she smiled. ‘So the HoloSphere did what you said, and it…they received the transmission. Everything. Just like you said. Down to the last blood cell and how it curves in that tiny vein in your-’
He grinned. ‘So we’re uploaded? Both of us?’
‘Yea. Seems like they liked us. Thought we were good enough to save. They won't save everyone though, Johnny. This system we're passing through…they're real particular. Real stringent. Strict protocols.’
‘We can do it, Sal.’
HoloSphere /
Johnny uploaded the new book Sally had wanted into their HoloSphere. ‘Here, Sal,’ he said, sitting down beside her. ‘I revised it for you. I had AI run through every historic restoration and interpretation ever scanned. Guess what?’ he grinned at her. ‘It matches.’
She looked at him in disbelief.
He continued, ‘Exactly like you said, Sal. Hell is a place, in the Future, physically. Somehow ancient astronomers must have observed a lensing event. From a black hole, maybe, I don’t know. But, if it’s in the Future -’
‘Maybe we can reroute Earth around it?’ she asked.
‘Yea, Sal,’ he smiled. ‘I don’t feel like goin’ to Hell.’
Gurneys and Gowns /
They loaded the gurneys from the trucks into the hospital’s morgue room. ‘Special envoy, military corpses only. Sign here, ma’am.’
Sally signed the papers. A lot of these guys had been Jack’s friends. She already knew what they were up to, so she had a decent memory recall of their personalities and proclivities. And she knew what the politicians and their stage crew nurses were about to accuse them of.
She watched the bodies go by on the gurneys, one by one. ‘I got you boys,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll get the gowns for the testing ready upstairs,’ she said to the security camera.
The Shadow of Death /
“It’s just a chip,” he told Sally, after injecting it in to the meat in the fold of her hand, between the thumb and forefinger. “It’s gonna link us.”
She smiled, looking down at her swollen stomach, “Cuz we’re not linked already?”
He smiled back, rubbing the spot on her hand. “There, all done.” He looked her in the face, stooping down a bit and peering into her eyes. The pupils dilated slightly, as they locked with his, the way they always did. “Hold still.” He peered a moment longer. One dilated again, the other twitched slightly, and widened a little more. He noticed the slightest fraction of independent movement in it. “Good,” he breathed. “You’re both still here.”