Unity code, p.13
Unity Code, page 13
“Because I put them back in their box.”
“I leave them here so I can find them.”
“Find them in the box,” Raijinn said. “What is the point of a file structure if we do not employ it?”
“Three-dimensional physical objects do not have file structures, I keep telling you, Raijinn.”
“And I keep telling you, semantics is no excuse for disorder.”
Daelia rolled her eyes and went to get the keys.
That Saturday’s briefing in the SCIF’s training auditorium was like every other Daelia had attended in her time here: long, meandering, and punctuated by a great deal of gallows humor.
Sometimes, Daelia wondered how anybody around Ellington got anything done. The officers especially seemed to be in briefings constantly. An inevitable part of the daily battle rhythm, as Rover might have said. She was just glad Bellona Robotics got to miss out on most of them. Dad did usually attend the weekly staff meeting though, something she’d forgotten to attend this week.
Hopefully he’d be back soon. And then she wouldn’t have to worry about it at all.
After almost an hour, it finally ended. Daelia collected her notebook and her now-empty bottle of tea and was on her way out when she ran into Argo in the hall.
Literally. Straight into him.
“Hey, hey, careful there,” he said, grabbing her left elbow before she could fall over.
His fingers dug in a little, sending a wave of pressure through the brace’s sensors and back into her nerveless skin. She yanked the limb away, thumb rubbing at the spot.
“You, ahh, you okay?” Argo asked.
“Fine,” Daelia said, a little short, and shook it out. A decade of her and Dad tweaking the interface and still, not everything translated exactly right. Sometimes she wondered how effective those brain-lace implants really were. What people really saw.
Argo looked past her. “How’d it go? Heard Sausage was doing a brief for the team.”
“Seemed to go well,” Daelia said, awkward now. It was just now occurring to her that she’d come over here in beat-up coveralls that were a size too big for her. With Argo looking at her, Daelia felt strangely self-conscious. She didn’t like the feeling and tried to shove it away. “Even if it did seem kind of unnecessary.”
Argo chuckled. “Come on, you know how fast rumors travel in the military, especially when people are bored. I think the boss is just trying to keep a lid on that.”
Daelia shrugged. “I didn’t say that it didn’t make sense, did I?”
Argo frowned, looking her over. Her discomfort with the entire situation increased. “You okay?” he asked.
He sounded genuinely interested in the answer.
Shit, she thought. Way to make this worse.
“What are you doing over here? I thought you were flying today.”
“Just finished,” he said. “Came in for shift change.”
“Ahh.”
“Seriously, is everything okay?”
Daelia released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. And thought of something. “What are you doing tonight?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Want to go see Cirque de Synthétique?”
Argo gave her a questioning look. “Is that the, uhh, abiota performance group?”
“Yeah, yeah, they do a big AR-enhanced aerobatics thing, along with an art show. They’re in town this weekend, and I guess SAAL is sponsoring the Envoy to put in an appearance tonight.”
“Seems kind of random.”
“I don’t know, it’s SAAL. Anyway, I guess the guest list is huge and they sent over a couple of tickets for Bellona Robotics, and…” she trailed off. “Serket’s on my case, Raijinn’s on my case. I don’t want to go alone.”
Argo nodded, obviously thinking about it. “Didn’t even know the Envoy was supposed to be in town.”
“Yeah, I don’t know what the deal is. But Raijinn thinks I need to go, so…”
“When and where?”
16
Shoving a couple of bills into the tip pitcher at the cash bar, Argo grabbed the pair of drinks already sweating on the counter and went to go find Daelia.
She hadn’t been lying.
She did not want to be here.
The event—and this was an event—was sprawled across twenty acres of Hermann Park. Part art installation and part performance, the Cirque de Synthétique was all about enhanced reality.
A few of the area museums were open that night as well. The fine arts complex. The war memorial. The natural history museum.
Daelia had asked Argo to meet her there at 1930, by the planetarium. “Nice and easy to find,” she’d said.
Argo wasn’t big on museums, but with the humid night outside, the air-conditioning inside was certainly appealing. And the place was nice. The main foyer, long and vaulted, was lit up, fitted with a temporary stage at one end. Currently occupied by a mixed human-and-abiota band, playing the latest in downtempo synthwave, the place was full of people. Milling about. Talking. Interacting with the AR-enabled exhibits.
The Envoy was speaking before the main performance itself, which would be held in the outdoor theater a little way to the south. That was in half an hour or so. Argo had been half hoping he’d get a chance to ask her about the situation in orbit—she apparently liked to wander through the crowds at these engagements, talking directly to anybody who stopped her—but so far, he hadn’t seen her.
He skirted a throng of people, gathered around the sauropod skeleton in the middle of the grand foyer, and headed into the paleontology hall. He found Daelia right where he had left her, in front of a case displaying a fossilized section of stegosaurus skin. The plaque on the exhibit proudly proclaimed the object’s origins out somewhere in West Texas.
Argo had lived all over the country during his time in the service, but Texans were something else. They never missed an opportunity to brag about anything from their state.
He said so to Daelia now, as he handed her the plastic cup of tonic water. She’d asked for a lime. Makes me look like I’m drinking, she’d said.
She grinned at him now. Tapped the case with a metal-wrapped finger. “It’s not about arrogance. Everything’s just better here.”
He laughed. “I thought everything was bigger here.”
“Well, that, too,” she said, and smiled. Argo realized she’d made an attempt at makeup for this; he hadn’t seen her with it on before, and thought she looked better without it. Not that she looked bad now, in leggings and boots and a top that didn’t have something screen-printed on it, but… “You know, we’re just proud of our state.”
“Everybody I’ve run into so far has been nice,” he conceded, and thought about that. “Everybody off base, anyway.”
“It’s a military thing, right?” she asked. “People being dicks?”
“It’s a pilot thing. Rubs off on everybody else in the Ops Group. It’s been like that at every unit I’ve ever been with. Except for Maintenance, they’re all crazy fuckers to begin with.”
And that really got Daelia laughing. “I’ve never heard a pilot admit that before.”
Argo shrugged. “Like you said, it’s not arrogance. It’s pride.”
“Right,” Daelia said, in a tone indicating she didn’t believe him at all, and wandered to the next case.
What exactly they were doing here, Argo wasn’t sure. Daelia had made it sound like it was some kind of industry thing, networking or something maybe, but she was clearly not interested in talking to anybody.
Probably why she’d drifted into the paleontology hall. This was a tech crowd tonight and the biology-heavy exhibit seemed a poor fit. The place was deserted. Still, as they walked along the Cretaceous displays, Argo wondered how much of this might actually be applicable in her discipline. Abiota were life-forms, weren’t they? That was what everyone insisted, and after flying with Emily, Argo was more inclined to believe it.
But how could they evolve without reproduction? Could they change? Did they?
Daelia did seem genuinely interested in the cases around them, stopping often to read a plaque or take a closer look at some fossil. Curious, Argo realized. She was just curious.
And then somebody ruined their night completely.
“Daelia Hall. As I live and breathe, how are you?”
Daelia froze, shock on her face. Argo glanced at her, and then in the direction of the man who’d spoken.
And…shit.
“Mr., uhh, Mr. Ulrich,” Daelia stammered. “H-hi.”
An older man was standing there, wrapped in a suit that made his lean frame look almost skeletal. His graying hair was unkempt, his fingers bent with the first signs of arthritis, but his dark eyes were keen, sharp. Taking everything in and missing nothing.
Most surprising to Argo, he didn’t have the telltale signs of neural implants. He didn’t even have a monocle on. Just a digital-cell watch and a haptic glove on one hand, probably for typing texts or something like that.
It was Neil Ulrich. The visionary behind the Society for the Advancement of Abiotic Life, and the co-founder of Omphalos, right along with Frank Tamm. While Tamm was mostly just an investor these days, Ulrich was CEO.
He was the kind of guy who liked to keep a low profile, from what Argo knew. A lot of the technocrats who’d come into their own in the late ’90s, with the rise of the Internet but before the abiota, were flashy, their public personas as recognizable as their brands. Guys like Tamm, actually. Not Ulrich. He gave billions to his various charities and ran his company from behind the Board of Directors and spent the rest of his time working on abiota recognition and rights issues.
As far as Argo knew.
“Good to see you, Daelia. How long’s it been?”
Daelia visibly shook herself and turned her attention to Argo. There was a plea in her eyes, and her voice was strained. “Umm, Mr. Ulrich, this is a friend of mine…”
“Jason Irvington,” Argo supplied, almost missing the beat, and he held out his hand. Had he really not told Daelia his first name? Probably not. “You two know each other?”
“Umm…” Daelia began.
Ulrich laughed. “Daelia was a recipient last year of one of our industry grants. For her PhD work, which, I might add, is exceptional. I was quite sad when I heard you chose to step away.”
“At least for the rest of the year,” Daelia said, recovering herself somewhat now. “I might come back to it or take a different angle. I just wasn’t—”
Ulrich held up a hand. “You don’t have to explain to me. If you feel that you were being asked to do something that violated your conscience, you shouldn’t pursue it. If it helps, that wasn’t the intention on our end. But I do think you have much to offer this community. Your funding will still be there when you choose to come back.”
It took her a moment to answer. “Thank you.”
“I’m glad I caught you,” he said, walking now. Daelia glanced at Argo and followed. “I was hoping to talk to your dad tonight, too. Is he here?”
“No, he has, uhh, other business to handle.”
Ulrich nodded knowingly and turned a corner, out of synch with the flow of the exhibit.
From the Cretaceous, they took a vast leap backwards through time, toward the Devonian. The cabinet here boasted an underwater scene, small fish and strange corals growing in abundance. A symbol on the bottom of the glass indicated there was an AR option here. Argo didn’t bother pulling it up.
“That’s a shame. I always appreciate his insights when it comes to abiota. He has an instinctive feel for them.” He stopped at the end of the case, where a collection of tiny fossils sat underneath plaques talking about the start of ammonoids, whatever the hell those were. “I always find this sort of exhibit…informative. Look at how long it took for biological life to develop and proliferate. How many forms it took. And how quickly your people have done it. You’re operating on a completely different scale. It’s quite fascinating. And humbling.”
Argo caught the odd phrasing and looked at Daelia. Her jaw was set, a flush on her face. He didn’t ask.
“It’s some perspective, alright,” she said.
“And now look at where we are,” Ulrich said. “First contact with alien life, and it’s abiotic. The implications are profound.”
That flush on Daelia’s cheeks grew. Embarrassment or anger, Argo wasn’t sure.
“What are the implications, Mr. Ulrich?” the pilot asked, not sure what was going on, but trying to steer the conversation away from it anyway.
“Many possibilities, Jason,” he said, smiling, and kept walking backwards, against the evolution of life. “We have biological sentient species that have clearly turned over a very important function, exploration, to Unity. Perhaps they had to. Space is terribly big, after all.” He smiled at his own faint joke. “Or perhaps they realized that abiota could manage their societies far better than they could themselves. We’re having arguments to that end here on Earth already. Or…”—and he paused for a moment, in front of a case all about Silurian fungi—“or perhaps they’ve overtaken biotic life entirely.”
“I thought the point of this was to welcome us into some kind of interstellar United Nations?” Argo said.
Ulrich laughed. “I’ve spoken to the Envoy several times. She’s very earnest, and I believe she’s telling us all she can, but I don’t believe that the Unity aliens are going to offer to take us out there.”
“Then what?”
“I think they’re going to establish themselves here, help us fix our own issues, and watch as we find our own way out to the stars,” Ulrich said. “That is, as long as we demonstrate that we can cooperate, put aside our own petty bickering and flaws and work toward a common goal.”
“Or maybe they’re just going to eat everybody,” Argo said drily.
Ulrich laughed. “Realistically, I doubt they can. If you think about digestion as an attempt to access necessary amino acids, lipids, sugars, does it make sense that these things would be so similar between planets that we could serve as a nutrition source for creatures from…”—and he spread his hands—“anywhere else?”
“I’ve seen abiota eat without needing to,” Argo replied.
The billionaire’s good humor fell a little. “Only others of their own kind,” he said. “And before you say it, yes, I have considered that as well. It’s one of the reasons I arranged this event. All of us have a vested interest in ensuring this first contact goes well.”
“I think we could all agree with that,” Argo said.
Smiling, Ulrich made to say something else, but his watch lit up. “Ahh, the performance is due to begin in about an hour, but I’m due by the greenroom,” he said. “Come on, you two. Come with me. I’m sure you’re curious about her.”
“I’m not really—” Daelia began.
“The Envoy? Shit, yes, I would love to ask her a few things,” Argo said, cutting that off.
She glared at him. He didn’t care.
Maybe this way, he could get some kind of answer about what was going on with his brother.
Daelia was going to kill Argo. Straight up. Murder him. Kick him off a bridge. Have Emily put a Hellfire through his town house window while he was sleeping.
Something.
Something painful.
This was exactly what she was trying to avoid tonight. SAAL. Her thesis. These discussions.
And for it to be Ulrich himself…
You should have known better than to trust a pilot, she thought to herself, bitter about the whole fucking thing.
Ulrich seemed oblivious to her irritation as they left the main hall and headed out into the main foyer. Despite his words about wanting to get to the Envoy, he still stopped a few times on their way out the door, shaking hands, acknowledging somebody.
One of these was a slight man who looked to be in his mid-thirties, white suit and dark copper skin, who was deep in conversation with one of the Cirque’s distinctive bipedal kugu models. Its AR field—projecting a massive and elaborate hat over the machine’s head—was flickering.
“Pranav!” Ulrich said, stepping into his space as surely as he’d invaded Daelia’s. “So here you are. Thought I lost you already.”
The man tore himself away from the kugu and nodded his head slightly. He had a full visor on, a discreet model that looked like oversized sunglasses. It was impossible to see his eyes.
“On exhibition nights like this, there’s always something that needs my attention.” His fingers moved as he talked, no doubt typing on a projected keyboard that only he could see. The kugu’s flickering AR stabilized. It beeped something at him, and he nodded again, turning fully toward them. “Distracting. You know how it is.”
“Pranav Barhi, Daelia Hall and Jason Irvington,” Ulrich said, waving indistinctly between them, and picked up his pace again. “Pranav is one of the geniuses behind this whole thing, and quite an engineer in his own right. You two would have a lot to talk about, I think.”
Behind the shield of his visor, the other man tilted his head. “Daelia Hall? As in—”
“Yeah,” Daelia said shortly.
Yet another conversation she did not want to have. Yet another reason she hated things like this. Industry things. Everyone knew who she was.
“So what do you do here?” Argo asked, cutting in. “I thought this was some kind of abiota art exhibit.”
Pranav laughed. An usher opened the museum’s doors for them, a swirl of wet night air curling up to embrace them as they stepped outside. The park here was lit up, both in meatspace and AR, dozens of art installations glowing in the darkness. The park’s own light poles were dark tonight. The only illumination came from the Cirque.
Up ahead, music spilled out of the performance pavilion like floodwaters from a broken dam. Hard, fast, overwhelming. The main performance hadn’t begun yet. This was one of the warm-up groups.
“Art exhibit doesn’t go quite far enough, Jason. This is a celebration of what abiota can do when their creativity is properly unleashed. Mostly emergents, of course.”
