Source code, p.21
Source Code, page 21
She needed a shower. A shower. A break. Something to eat.
But what good was it going to do?
Somebody had altered her research. Veda? The university? And why? The Array had had her plans and hadn’t deleted them.
She wasn’t sure what that meant.
Daelia wandered out to the small personnel door that led out onto the flight line. The light was fractured, hazy, the result of being filtered through low, thin clouds. The sun was a huge red ball on the horizon, obscured at the very bottom by a smattering of trees on the far side of the runway.
What was in that capsule? What was in that code?
What was causing that fog she’d seen last night?
She’d thought that was the reason for all the disruptions yesterday, but apparently not.
The abiota were acting up again.
Out in their static displays. Further up, in the military shelters at the top of the runway. Daelia toggled back and forth between the air show AR and the military overlay.
So much unrest.
She could hear Emily trumpeting at it.
She tried to shake it off. She desperately needed some sleep, and there weren’t any answers to be had here. If Daelia was going to prove that her detector could work—it had to work—as a purely analog device, it would just have to be another way. Another time.
“I often find you looking at the sky,” a synthetic voice said behind her. “Why is that?”
“A human thing, maybe,” Daelia said as Raijinn walked its kugu up. “Don’t you wonder what’s out there?”
“Meatspace is rarely my concern.”
Yeah. Raijinn would say something like that, she thought. “Any word from Dad?”
“Not yet.”
“Shit,” she muttered, and nodded out at the runway. “Look at this. Everybody’s agitated.”
“Indeed,” said the server room’s abiota. “I feel it myself.”
“What does that mean, ‘you feel it’? Feel what?” Daelia asked.
Raijinn turned the blank eyes of its kugu toward her. “I have no idea,” it said. “It is something deep, like a vibration or a sound, running through everything.”
That gave Daelia pause. The server room was air-gapped, from everything except the kugu, and that wasn’t capable of data capture behind its cameras and microphone. One single and very encrypted frequency. No additional transmissions.
“Can you show me?” she asked.
Raijinn nodded once with the slightest incline of the kugu’s head.
Ellington’s AR field, normally so dry and clinical, was filled with mist. Not real mist. Of course not. It was all a projection. But it didn’t look like real mist. Knee high, swirling. Like somebody had just dumped the biggest load of dry ice ever out on the oil-stained expanse of concrete.
It was flowing over the planes. Flowing through them. Even the dumb ones. But the effect was more pronounced on the abiota. Like Raijinn, who was staring down at its kugu as mist flowed up the form.
The same mist she’d been seeing around the space rock.
“Any thoughts on the nature of this?” Raijinn asked.
Daelia switched back to the PR overlay. Everything was fine there. Placid, even. “Not a clue,” she said, and yawned into the back of her hand. “Did you notify the base cyber office?”
“Indeed I have. But they don’t have any kind of abiotic analyst on staff. I’m afraid reviewing the raw TGLP will take them hours. Perhaps days.” Raijinn made a small sound that could have been a grunt. “I have not been overly impressed by the human team there.”
“You and me and everyone else around here,” Daelia sighed.
“Why does the base not handle that? Those humans fail at their primary purpose on a near-hourly basis.”
Daelia chuckled. It was the closest thing to irritation she’d heard yet from the training server. “I’m gonna go get some sleep,” she told it. “Wake me up if something changes.”
Emily hated air show weekend.
Hated it with every circuit, every impulse, of her being.
It wasn’t that she was territorial, although she was.
In the core of her logic algorithms, she knew that the airfield belonged to the humans. They paid for it, they maintained it. She would not have been able to fly had it not been for their ministrations on the place, and thus, she grudgingly accepted their claims of ownership.
In meatspace, at least.
And what did that matter, against the deeper reality of existence?
No, it was her airfield because it was hers. She was the premier emergent in this place. The most intelligent, the most decisive, the most deadly—although that was only to say, the one who held the most influence over the happenings of the meat-realm. Nothing happened here except that which she suffered to happen, and that which she suffered was all in service to her. Her flights. Her peace.
But air shows shattered that peace. There were too many humans here, too many little devices riding along, synthetic minds chirping data requests at her as the humans gawked. The attention itched at her, tugging her perfect form in all different directions, a thousand TGLP personal variant overlays warping her out of shape.
Infuriating things, like the impudent little program she’d eaten the day before.
The humans, her humans, attempted to help with that. The PR overlay in the AR space helped somewhat. A shield, a wall, between her and the devices.
She was an ambassador for her people, Rover and Scurvy and all the rest told her. A shining example of what heights an abiota could achieve in its evolution of self.
It was a foolish view, but a flattering one, and what good was the magnificent form she had commissioned for herself if she never got to show it off? Impressing humans was entirely the point of such things. These weekends provided thousands, tens of thousands, of jealous eyes.
So perhaps not everything about the air show was terrible. It was her chance to preen and roar and show off the might commanded by the Texas Air Guard and the United States Air Force.
But there were still the other planes.
The dumb ones, the old ones, they were fine. Sessile. Inert. They bothered her not at all.
No, what she really hated was sharing her space with the active-duty abiota. Like those cursed Storm Gryphons, squatting in her own personal lair at the far end of the runway. Arrogant in their simulated glory.
But even they were not the thing truly disturbing her peace this weekend.
No.
That would be the hum.
That hum. That hum.
Emily wanted that hum to stop. It felt like the time one of her maintainers had left a screwdriver inside her fuselage. And just like that incident, she suspected this had the power to hurt her, if given enough time.
An itch she couldn’t scratch, an irritant she couldn’t remedy.
Rover had promised her a week of live-fire runs out over the Gulf if she behaved herself this weekend. So Emily hunkered down inside her fence, glowering.
Trying not to listen to that damn sound.
26
All Garcia wanted to do was enjoy the morning.
He’d half expected to get called in today. Called in to account for himself. At either one of his jobs. NASA or the unit. But nobody had contacted him, which was great.
He had plans, after all.
Lara had spent the night working herself into something of a terrible mood after that conversation with the new officer, Argo. Another entitled pilot. Who the fuck did something like that, showing up at some enlisted guy’s apartment? Even Bumper had never gone that far. But now Lara was convinced there was something terribly wrong.
Maybe there was.
Wasn’t a damn thing Garcia could do about it.
Besides, it was his favorite meet-up day of the year. And he was not going to let it be ruined by random space junk.
Houston had never been particularly blessed with fan conventions. There were a few local cons, pretty tiny, and then a few big corporate ones. The state’s biggest science fiction convention happened up in Dallas in April, and it always seemed to fall on drill weekend. Garcia hadn’t been in years.
At least this was their club’s best meet-up of the year. Conventions were air-conditioned, sure, and charity events at a couple of the local children’s hospitals were arguably more rewarding, but this was his favorite thing.
The air show. Take photos in costume with the planes, talk to the public, maybe make a few people jealous. It was just fun. It was as fun as military planes got.
And this year, Miranda had even gotten them tickets to the Repose.
Garcia had been out there before. Once or twice. A lot of people on the base avoided it. Said it was haunted. Stupid shit like that. Even if people had souls—something Garcia was dubious of anyway—machines definitely didn’t.
Besides, nothing in the Repose was dead. Just…quiet.
The massive facility was on the other side of the airfield, and for privacy, access was only possible via a shuttle that ran from the air museum parking lot. Tickets were limited. While you could visit any time of the year, there was something about the air show that seemed to drive demand through the roof. Miranda had booked this back in January, when yearly ticket sales opened.
Today, in acknowledgment of the air show, the bus was departing from the base of the tower. The club had already had a full morning wandering around the static displays, interfacing with the public, but this was going to be just theirs.
As they walked up to where the rest of the detachment was waiting, Lara tugged at a strap on her boot. She had a flight lieutenant costume on, the old-school style from the original series, hair teased out in a messy approximation of an ’80s perm. The older uniforms were sleeker, easier to construct but harder to fit properly, but Lara was good with that stuff. Garcia loved the way it clung to her curves.
“Damn, I think we almost missed the bus,” Garcia said, checking the time on his pocket-chrono. That was a screen-accurate replica, Lara’s Christmas present to him last year, and he loved the thing. It was ridiculous, sure, like everything else in Orpheus Watch, but it was fun, and that was all he cared about.
It was a nice contrast to the utilitarian tedium of the real military.
“We’re here, aren’t we?” Lara replied.
“Another day in paradise,” Garcia grumbled.
“You know,” she said as they headed over to join the rest of their club, “if we hadn’t already bought tickets for this, I probably would have gone in today.”
“What, to the unit?”
“Yeah. I mean, meteors that aren’t meteors are pretty unusual,” Lara said. “Heck, even Hall’s working on it.”
“Lee?” Garcia liked Lee Hall. No nonsense. Smart. Not constantly causing him problems.
“Daelia.”
“Ahh. The cute one.”
At that, Lara finally laughed, and punched him lightly in the arm. “I’m all the cute you can handle, Commander,” she teased.
Garcia smiled back. He liked hearing the humor there. She’d always been somewhat serious, but then, he liked that about her. Since VirCon last year, she’d laughed a lot less.
They always had a good time at these sorts of things, though.
One of the stipulations for the 991st was no AR panoply. You had to make your costume the hard way. With your own hands, your own ingenuity.
Or your girlfriend made it for you.
Whatever.
It was nice to get out and get some fresh air.
As the shuttle rumbled around the lower edge of the airfield, around the southern end of the runway, past the new spaceport terminal, the emergent in the driver’s seat talked a bit about what to expect, what the Repose was. Canned stuff.
Garcia didn’t pay attention. He’d heard it all before.
After they got there and all piled out, the din of the air show far away, he helped get the AR field emitter set up. Their bottled backdrop for the day.
This was another reason—the reason—why the Repose was such a great setting. They could set up their own overlay out here, well away from the PR nonsense of the show.
While Orpheus Watch made extensive use of both manned and unmanned fighter aircraft, the main setting was an orbital station. So it was just more fun to be inside that. Virtually.
Lara had originally designed the setting, back when she was still doing illumination work. Another couple of members of the club had taken up the task when she’d given that up, enthusiastically expanding and refining the scene until the AR field looked exactly like the main hangar bay from the show.
But no sooner had they set up the emitter than Garcia heard the telltale whirring of rotors, and he knew they were fucked.
He looked up.
A dragon was circling overhead.
Emily.
There was no concessions shift today.
Thank god.
Somehow, even with the tent awning, Rover had managed to get a sunburn yesterday. Right along the back of his neck. The collar of his polo shirt rubbed at the inflamed skin as he walked through the quiet squadron, a truly maddening sensation.
He was contemplating grabbing some lotion from the locker room—somebody had to have a bottle of it in their personal locker, right?—when a call came through. When the trajectory of his morning changed.
Emily.
They’re back.
That was all she said. All she needed to.
He gritted his teeth in frustration.
“Back again today, boss?”
That was Scurvy, sweat-soaked and flushed, in workout gear.
Rover saw him clearly for a moment, and then a dozen aerial surveillance photos slammed down over his vision. Shit. He was still learning to navigate the damn implant. It was supposed to adapt to a person’s individual thought patterns and data-processing style, to work intuitively. He was still struggling with image uploading, though.
“I told you to take the weekend off, Chief,” Rover said, somewhat distracted as he blinked through the images from Emily.
“That was before somebody threw a giant space rock at us.”
“So what, you’re working out at eleven-fucking-thirty because you’ve got so much going on?”
“Touché,” Scurvy said with a smile. “No, we’ve got a little bit of paperwork to close out, then I’ll have the team start breaking the EMC back down.”
Rover grunted. He’d spent most of the morning dealing with State. General McMillan was not happy about last night’s little smash and grab by NASA. He just hoped nobody figured out he’d been talking to Navarro about ways around—
Another message popped up.
They have overlays.
“Hang on, Chief,” Rover said, and activated the phone app in his NULI. That, at least, was running smoothly already. It connected instantly. “Emily, do not take this into your own hands. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Do not like them here.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m coming.” And he killed the call.
“What’s going on?”
“Damn 991st is out at the Repose.”
Scurvy shook his head. “Didn’t we have a talk with them last year?”
“We have a talk with them every year,” Rover said, “and the air show rules are clear on this shit. If Garcia’s with them…”
Chief sighed. “I’ll deal with him. Let me get a shower first, though, okay?”
But when Rover got through to the duty NCO at Emily’s station, she told him there wasn’t any cosplay group anywhere near the display. Which meant either Emily was lying, or…
Or they were out at the Repose.
Shit.
If it had been up to Rover, nobody would have been allowed into the Repose. It wasn’t like the Boneyard out at Davis-Monthan, a repository meant to preserve its aircraft in something of a useable state.
Nothing in the Repose would ever fly again.
As he understood it, nothing out there wanted to.
But it wasn’t up to him. The place was owned by the TMD but administered by the Domain Array. They made the rules out. And for reasons Rover had never been able to fathom, they allowed humans—civilians, even—to visit.
The Repose was the final resting place of military abiota that refused to communicate. Bricked, all of them. Like they were all in comas. Brain-dead. Something like that. Who wanted random assholes traipsing through their family member’s hospital room, just to ogle at them?
But the Array had a deal with the local air museum. For whatever reason, they allowed humans through the place.
Borrowing one of the airfield trucks from Maintenance, Rover skirted the north end of the runway, into the restricted area on the east side. There were about thirty abiota parked here. Despite the sustainment power feeds they were all hooked into, their airframes sat silent, motionless. The place always felt like a mausoleum to him.
Not somewhere one came for a good time.
He met Emily just inside the gate. She had her kugu out, a quadcopter the size of a truck tire, sleek and blue, chassis stamped with the strange pseudo-tribal markings of the Array. They’d given it to her about five years back, a gift recognizing her as the head of the base’s abiota. Queen of the airfield. Rover hadn’t been happy about it, but at least the thing had limited range.
Right now, it was settled on the ground, her smaller AR form wrapped around it. The aerial kugu couldn’t accommodate her full HD render. This dragon still had two heads, but was lithe and light, scales a pale gold and eyes like emeralds.
Simpler, more cartoony. Downright adorable.
If you didn’t know her.
“What’s going on, Emily?”
They disturb.
“I know it irritates you to have people here—”
Overlays like itch.
“I don’t control this place,” he told her. “The museum has rules about this sort of thing. Talk to them.”
Irritates all of us.
“I know, you speak for the flock, but if the museum sold them tickets—”
Ussssssssssssssss.
