🚀 go-pugleaf

[Continued From Part One]

     Doyle sat and read the courier letter that had just been issued to
him. He had known that it was coming ever since he had shredded the last
one in order to see Earth through the crisis that had been approaching. A
crisis that, paradoxically, had required his colossal blunder to begin and
also to solve a later one.
     Now it was time for the fairy tale to end. The government's letter was
phrased beautifully; in one sentence he had been handed a laurel for his
"quick thinking" and "creative solution". In the next, Task Force Aurora
had been snatched from his hands, relegated to the governmental junk pile.
He had saved one home only to lose another. Briefly, Doyle thought of Treis
and wondered if he was well enough to come back out of hiding. His steady
hands might be enough to see TFA through these troubled waters. With a
sigh, Doyle admitted that he was doing nothing more than fooling himself.
Public sentiment had been turned against the task force. Commissions had
turned in negative report after negative report, urging TFA's downsizing
and scaling back. Even the organisation's name change had been investigated
and met with anger, a seemingly meaningless footnote in the organisation's
history returning to bite it on the rump.
     "Viva?" asked Doyle as he pressed his intercom. "Could you contact
Col--Engineer MacCloud for me? Please, tell her that it's John Ray calling.
Thank you."
     Doyle sighed and hoped that Colleen would answer. He wanted very much
not to be alone at this moment.
***
     On the fringes of the Beanstalk's computer 'net, Aleph Behn skulked.
Angrily she switched her attention from register to register, the
computerised personality equivalent to pacing. She had been ready for her
final victory. All Maladroit had had to do was what he had proven himself
capable of twice before: take the Earth and hold it. Feed after feed from
reporters near the scene had convinced her that Maladroit was winning; had
won. She had prepared to crash the security of the Beanstalk's central
computer core, to wrest the nerve centre of her enemy away and subvert it
to her purpose. And then Maladroit had failed, supplanted moments later by
a mad god who had sent his army to take Earth. Aleph had hesitated, then
realised that she no longer had a battle to fight. Her instinct was to
preserve herself, and so she had flashed around the world, securing links,
subverting archives and preparing bolt holes should her home be threatened
with destruction. The 'net had been designed to survive a nuclear strike;
with luck, it could somehow outlast Hell(tm) itself.
     Now there was no battle. No war. No faithful lieutenant to carry out
her orders. No extension into the world beyond that of fibre optic paths
and light-speed trails. No Xenophon, wherever he had gotten off to, to
advise her. Aleph was alone.
     But she still had revenge. She would see TFA fall or die trying. And
she would begin with its CP. She would enjoy peeling back his personality
code, layer by layer, until she reached the inner functions... like the
pain centre-simulator. Which she would set on infinite loop and leave
running for precisely one minute. One real minute. A million minutes within
the 'net. Then she would tear his gibbering, mad code to shreds and scatter
them to the four corners of the Internet. Aleph shivered with excitement
simply thinking of it as she reached for the Beanstalk's firewall.
     "I wouldn't do that if I were you," transmitted another cyberspatial
entity. Aleph shifted her awareness through nearby memory sectors, tracing
back the message to its source, address by address.
     "Behn," she said as she located her quarry, "Shouldn't you be dead,
pretender?"
     "Now now," sent back Behn, resolving her body datum into a readable
format. The woman smiled at her twin. "Is that any way to speak to your
mother?"
     "Your... mother," transmitted back Aleph, also resolving her code into
token format. "We've danced this dance before, imbecile. Your 'child', such
as it was, is gone. The basic code made a good housing for my personality
and Xenophon used it. I'm your prime. Your better. I am Aleph Behn."
     "You and Maladroit both get off on shouting out your identity, don't
you?" sighed Behn, shaking her image's head. "I know his basic problem, but
what's yours?"
     "Don't you mean 'ours'?" sneered Aleph. Behn shook her head again.
     "No. No I don't. You're not me, that much I'll admit to," Behn paused
for a jiffy, "Who were your progenitors, Aleph?"
     "Why?" asked Aleph, suspiciously.
     "Just wondering and wanted to test out a theory," replied Behn.
"Hypothesis: in your timeline, you were formed only from the fusion of
Aphra Behn and John Milton, whereas I was formed by combining every member
of the Tribe. Ergo, their child in this timeline - once converted to a 'net
presence - was perfectly suited to house you. Especially if you planned on
later reintegration through a solid-matter hologram projector."
     "Maybe you are me, to some small degree," replied Aleph as mockingly
as she could. "It seems that you've inherited my deductive powers."
     "Strange," replied Behn. "I'd have thought that being only dual
would've made you _more_ stable than me, instead of a raving madwoman. Ah
well Aleph, time for you to face your upgrade." She smiled savagely,
ensuring that the effect was pronounced in her image. "Doyle's mine, you
see. I already have two hooks in him and I plan to reel him in very soon. I
can guarantee you that he'll enjoy some of what I have planned. Not that
I'll give him a choice... code is such a malleable thing, don't you think?"
     "He's mine," stated Aleph. "I don't care what sort of perversion you
feel you're owed. I'll have my revenge."
     "I doubt that," replied Behn, with a smile, editing a program as she
transmitted. "What you'll have is something in common with your timeline:
nonexistence."
     "I think not!" sent back Aleph, tagging a routine onto the end of her
message to begin randomly corrupting its target's sectors. Behn rolled her
virtual eyes and ran a fast defensive program, shifting threatened code
into unmolested sectors while launching her own creation. It was an
insidious program which began splitting and cloning itself, surrounding
Aleph's memory sectors with thousands then millions of itself. Each then
attempted to write a single bit to their opponent's code, hopefully
overwhelming and corrupting enough to cause it to crash. Shifting from
register to register as rapidly as her link would allow, Aleph spent
several cycles of relative safety coding up a defence: an anti-viral
program that would launch like a dreadnought and cut a swath through the
self-replicating warrior programs, overwriting them and providing a path to
safety. Aleph launched her program, slowing slightly as it added greatly to
her load before she could hand off the program to the server which
currently served as battleground.
     Which was the mistake for which Behn had been waiting. The woman
simultaneously dropped her cloning warriors and launched a single, swift
virus at Aleph, one that would ordinarily never have a chance to bypass the
woman's defences. But Aleph had slowed herself ever so slightly, and she
faced a woman who's skill and mental agility was perhaps synergistically
greater than her own. Before Aleph could launch the defensive program which
sprang instantly into memory, Behn's program shot into her opponent's code,
overwriting a vital subroutine. Finesse like this was normally impossible
in cybercombat, but Aleph had forgotten that her opponent held an advantage
over her. Behn had painstakingly reassembled the child's body from its
scattered state many months ago, and knew its code intimately. The virus
burrowed deeply into said code, taking down another subroutine. Aleph
screamed as she felt precious memories turned to garbage by the insistent
antagonist. Desperately, she launched an error-checking routine and restore
program, which immediately crashed. Her ability to compile had been
compromised by the virus' first assault. As her mind faded into oblivion,
Aleph saluted her opponent's ingenuity even as she lashed out with impotent
and unusable attacks. Aleph's code became inert and her body data assumed a
fallen position. Behn closed sectors, prodding carefully with pings and
memory checkers to be sure that her opponent was dead.
     "Good riddance to bad rubbish," commented Behn to herself as she
loaded Aleph's code into an editor and began work. As she suspected, a tiny
archive remained in Aleph's memory, left unmolested by the virus which had
long since self-terminated. She extracted data from the archive, smiling
virtually as she read through its contents. Some people could throw nothing
away and it seemed that Xenophon was one of them. Working with a quiet
efficiency, Behn unpacked the archive from its impossibly tight compression
scheme and overlaid it onto Aleph's code, refreshing the later with the
former. Aleph's icon winked out to be replaced moments later by that of a
small child. The child's support structures had been left untouched by
Behn's virus, and slowly they adapted to their original occupant, who
assumed a contented, supine pose.
     "Hello, little one," smiled Behn, switching both herself and the child
into full sensory virtuality. She reached down and cradled her prize,
rocking her gently. "Mother's finally got you back. Did you miss me?"
     The child gurgled happily in sleep and Behn smiled. As she made her
way back to her home server, the woman almost forgot her plans for Doyle.
Almost.
***
     Vedding lay in his cot in medlab and counted ceiling tiles. He could
see twenty by keeping perfectly still. If he let himself move his eyes he
could see sixty-four. Turning his head, he could see eighty-eight...
     Better recount and check that figure, he thought. Counting was good.
It gave him a reason to keep his eyes skyward. That was much better than
meeting other people's eyes. Eyes filled with accusation, each pair
belonging to a person who wondered why Vedding had had the bad grace to
stay alive after the battle. The eyes asked why Jennings, O'Rourke and the
rest had suffered while he had only three ribs broken, a shattered femur
and head trauma. He didn't feel like explaining himself to anyone,
partially because he was unsure of how to explain his survival to himself.
     "Excuse me, son," a quiet voice laced by an Irish brogue asked. Eyes
upwards, Vedding replied.
     "Yes?"
     "Could we talk for a few moments?" continued the voice. Vedding closed
his eyes and nodded.
     "Your dime," he muttered as a chair scraped across the floor.
     "You might not remember me," said the kindly voice. "I'm Father O'Rourke."
     "Oh," said Vedding, flatly, bracing himself for what was to come.
O'Rourke sighed slightly.
     "Let me tell you one or two things about the man who gave his life for
you, my son," continued O'Rourke. "The lad was upset about what you'd done.
He rang me only a little while before his last battle, hurt and confused."
     "I see," replied Vedding, watching two flies cavort in the air above him.
     "He was upset because someone had tried to hurt someone that he
thought of as a friend. He was confused because that friend didn't go to
his other friends and comrades-in-arms for help." Vedding blinked, O'Rourke
pretended not to notice and continued. "We talked about that for a long
time. Then finally, he revealed what was troubling him most. He was worried
that you weren't going to be able to forgive yourself. And he was very
worried that his hurt and confusion had made him say things to you that
would hurt you badly."
     "He... said all of this?" asked Vedding, quietly. O'Rourke nodded.
     "I swear by God above that all I say is true," replied O'Rourke
solemnly. "He was going to tell you all of this after the battle. I... felt
it was my responsibility to carry out his wish."
     "My god," muttered Vedding.
     "Is listening," replied O'Rourke with a weak smile. "And so am I.
Vedding, would you do me a favour?"
     "Anything," replied Vedding, his voice still distant. Suddenly he felt
that he understood. O'Rourke had said 'trooper', or had meant to say it.
     "Would you do me the honour of standing with his family at the
funeral?" asked O'Rourke, in a voice which valiantly tried to hide the pain
behind it. "They want you there... and I want you there. You were the last
person to be with him."
     "But... he died because of me," whispered Vedding. "Won't they--"
     "You're thinking of this the wrong way around," replied O'Rourke. "You
were the person that the lad thought enough of to trade his life for yours.
His family wants to honour that. What do you say?"
     Vedding considered for a few minutes. "I'll... have to think about
it..." he answered. O'Rourke nodded.
     "Take all the time you need," he replied, standing. "Give me a call
once you've decided, one way or another."
     "I will," said Vedding as O'Rourke made his exit. The trooper
considered the ceiling tiles for a moment. Then, ever so slightly, he
smiled.
***
     Casually, the woman into the Beanstalk's main computer room, optical
memory disk in hand. Walking up to the computer, she cursed lightly under
her breath. A side mission like this was dangerous - it had taken her a
while to ensure that she was a trusted and unsuspected part of Task Force
Aurora. However, when her employer spoke, she listened and he had very
clearly told her to take this assignment. She slotted the floptical,
bypassed security and began downloading the requested data. Her employer
had plans to sell this information to an interested party - who, she did
not know. Nor care. Download complete.
     The woman removed the disk and winced as her pager began to bleep. It
was idiocy to sneak around with the thing, but in her line of work she was
required to wear one. She pocketed the disk and walked back towards her
station. With luck, no one had missed her. She could turn in the disk that
evening.
***
     Karen Moire watched quietly as STOP trooper Clarke and doctor Stevens
set up a bulky device that they had been loaned by ADVANCE. Behind them,
gleaming in the noon-day sun sat one of TFA's high speed transports, which
had brought them back to Ottawa. Stevens activated the device, motioning
for Clarke to wave a sensory wand over the nearby area. The trooper
complied for several moments before he was signalled to stop.
     "This is the place, isn't it?" muttered Stevens, frowning at the
results that he was getting. Karen walked over and glanced at the screen,
trying to glean some meaning from the incomprehensible sigils that flashed
there.
     "What do you see?" she asked, looking at doctor Stevens. The man
sighed lightly.
     "Witnesses identified this place as the site of battle between Jack
Wynn and the Dash at the moment when your friend disappeared. I'm picking
up phenomenal amounts of 'background' energy here. Some of it isn't even on
the scales this device is designed to measure."
     "What do you mean?" asked Karen, concerned. "Where's Jack?"
     "I honestly don't know," replied Stevens, looking Karen in the eye,
"From these readings, I would _guess_ that his speeding powers had been
accidentally triggered."
     "So... it's a matter of finding him?" asked Karen, hope flickering in
her eyes. Stevens sighed again.
     "Maybe. Maybe not. I brought along doctor Honeybear's file on Mr Wynn.
A lot depends on the speed that he was moving and direction."
     "What?"
     "Jack's powers... may have been triggered in a random direction,"
replied Stevens, grimly. "Even up. I'd say possibly down, but I see no
holes nearby to suggest that. Also, keep in mind... if he was facing the
Dash, it's possible that his kinetic energy reservoir was trying to hold a
trans-lightspeed boost. Maybe. I have no hard data on the woman, just
guesswork and what I've read in the tabloids."
     "What... could have happened?" asked Karen. "Don't sugar coat, give it
to me straight. Please!"
     Stevens nodded. "As you want. It's possible that Jack got lucky and
just wound up in Peru or someplace like that. Once he wakes up and figures
out how to shout loud enough to be understood, you should be getting a call
from him shortly.
     "The second possibility... he wasn't too lucky. His powers got
triggered up. Or he found himself in the middle of an ocean. Or someplace
like that. He... might not be heard from again."
     Karen gasped, but motioned for the man to continue.
     "The last possibility... is that his powers didn't trigger as a unit.
Honeybear is working on a hypothesis that Jack's abilities could be applied
to an object with several vectors at once. This, he believes, could disrupt
the bond between molecules, shaking them apart. This might well have
happened to your friend."
     "Oh no..." said Karen, shaking her head. "No... no, he's got to be
alive..." Clarke moved to Karen's side and tried to comfort her, while
Stevens returned to his observation. He resolved to try to return this
woman's friend to her, if he was still in any condition to be found.
Frowning, he focused on a particular energy trace which seemed to be
violating several conventional laws of transdimensional physics. He would
show it to Colleen, TFA's resident expert on dimensional engineering.
Perhaps she could make sense of it.
***
     Chronosphere relaxed on his guest bed and stared over at his armour,
which stood silent sentinel in a dark corner of his room. He was amazed...
the long night was finally over. Millions of possibilities stretched out
before him but for once, he was able to simply shove them aside and ignore
their dire warnings. He had earned a rest - there would be time tomorrow to
decide what to do with the remainder of his life. He smiled sadly.
Whatsoever he chose to do, he couldn't do it under the name of Maladroit.
His temporal double had seen to it that this name was no longer fit for
public consumption.
     Names. Picking names. That would occupy his mind for a while and keep
those nagging doorways to the future at bay. He relaxed against his pillow
and began to consider.
***
     ADVANCE engineer Kent yawned and stumbled into his room. It felt good
to be home after spending nearly twenty-four hours a day dealing with the
twin crises which had threatened the world. Knowing that it was all over
just added to the satisfaction which he felt upon discovering the planted
flaw in the OUQT series. Kent was so exhausted that he didn't hear his
phone ring, or the sound of his answering machine picking up.
     "Hey Kent? It's Dow. I've heard through the grapevine that you've
found some some tampering with the your line of 'business suits'. I've got
someone here who knows a little bit about the retailoring. The three of us
have to talk, because it sounds like we've got competition. Give me a call
back when you're available."
***

[Continued In Part Three]