Deep dive, p.20
Deep Dive, page 20
I have no idea if any of this is even close to being theoretically sound. I know jack shit about time travel, but I’ve watched enough movies and read enough books to know that a paradox is usually wildly misunderstood.
“Time travel? Seriously? That’s your story?” O’Laughlin laughs derisively. “Try again, Banuk.”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“Whatever.” O’Laughlin snaps his fingers at Shepard. “Tell Donald the hit’s back on.”
“Belay that order,” Shepard says quietly.
The sound of her calm command reverberates around the room like the echo from a whip crack. O’Laughlin’s cheeks flush purple with embarrassment at having his supposed authority blown to hell in front of the likes of me, but he doesn’t argue.
“I’ll admit, your story smacks of desperation,” Shepard says. “However, I’m willing to accept, for the time being, that you’re telling at least part of the truth. The fact remains that Deep Dive is broken and our people, including some version of you, are trapped in their suspension pods, leaving you the resident expert in how to unfuck this.”
“I can fix it, Shepard. I swear.”
Her eyes narrow. “Alana only gets one reprieve.”
A lukewarm wave of relief washes over me. It’s only a temporary stay of execution, but right now I’ll take anything I can get.
Granted, I have no idea how I’m going to fix this infernal machine, but if I can stall long enough, I might be able to convince Reggie to get word to Alana that she needs to take a long vacation and not tell anyone where she’s gone.
“All right.” Shepard lifts her phone. “Change of plans, Donald.” She pauses, looking irritated at whatever Donald’s response is. “I don’t really give a shit how excited you were, if you’d like to keep your job, you’ll do what I say.” Another pause. “Thank you.”
Shaking her head, Shepard slips the phone into her back pocket, then says to me, “You have two hours. I’d suggest you get started if you want to keep Alana alive.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Shepard stands guard behind me. O’Laughlin’s long gone. Finn ran off to sharpen his knives or oil his guns or something, so it’s just me and her, alone in this massive room filled with the quiet hum of machinery and the psychedelic Pepto-Bismol glow of the suspension pods.
Wiping my sweaty hands on my pants, I lean over the keyboard and run a few basic diagnostics. I mostly know my way around a PC. Problem is, I’m limited to localized fixes, because the computer is hardwired to Deep Dive and operates off an internal intranet that Shepard claims is impervious to outside intrusion.
“We’re still not entirely sure what caused the malfunction that trapped the soldiers in the pods,” she says. “They’d gone on extended dives before, usually two to three days tops. Never had a problem with life-support or anything. Then all of a sudden, everything went to shit.”
Her tone is relaxed, conversational, like I’m a new employee with whom she’s trying to build a positive rapport. I don’t buy it for a second. She’s an awful human being no matter how pleasantly she schools her voice. What I need to do is get her out of here.
“Doran told me his brother disappeared from the scanners,” I say. “Any idea why?”
“Our technicians detected some strange quantum fluctuations when they went over the data,” Shepard says, “but we haven’t been able to determine their precise nature.” She pauses, taps her chin. “I wonder if they have anything to do with the time dilation you mentioned.”
She says it all casual-like, but I know better than to assume she’s not suspicious as hell of my story. Especially because I’m still thinking on the fly, racking my brain for a solution that might not exist, all the while acting like I know what I’m doing.
“Time’s a funny thing,” I say.
“What’s it like?” Shepard says. “The future?”
And this is why we don’t concoct big, elaborate lies on the fly.
“Pretty much the same. Climate change is still a problem, though there’s talk of adapting the Mars terraforming initiative for use on Earth. There was a global pandemic a couple years back, which was not fun. No zombies, though, so yeah. Um, self-driving cars are outselling gas guzzlers. Oh, and they finally invented actual hover boards that use magnetic levitators, so those are all the rage. Also really expensive to insure. Otherwise, you know, same old same old.” I change the subject. “Have you tried turning Deep Dive off and then turning it back on?”
“I’m told that would sever whatever connection still exists between the minds and the bodies of everyone in the submersion pods, including the other you.” Shepard shrugs. “But hey, if you’re game…”
“What? No!”
“Just checking.”
Jesus Christ.
“OK, just bear with me for a second. I need to think this through.”
“You’re the one with the deadline,” she says. “See what I did there? Deadline?”
I’m fairly proud of myself for maintaining my composure just then. “Anyway. So you can’t turn off Deep Dive because everyone will die, which is bad.” I stress this mostly for Shepard’s benefit. “You also can’t reload the training simulation your Peter designed since everyone is technically still online and taking it offline will also sever whatever connection’s keeping them alive.”
“You see our predicament.”
“I’m assuming some of the program files are corrupted?”
“That’s our assumption as well.”
That gives me pause. “Um, then why haven’t you tried to repair them?”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
She glares down at me. “Because someone made them unsearchable.”
“Oh.”
“You’re the someone, by the way,” Shepard says.
“Yeah, I got that.”
Shepard flaps her hand at the computer. “So make them searchable, Future Man.”
I stare at the computer screen. “It’s not that simple.”
“Why is that?”
“I have to figure out where I hid them.”
“I fail to see what the problem is.”
I tap my head. “Remember how I said I’ve been having memory issues?”
Shepard sighs. “I’m beginning to regret giving you a chance to fix this.”
“Call Alana if you don’t believe me. She’s been dealing with my fucked up brain for days.” Even mentioning my wife in front of Shepard feels like a betrayal, but I’m running out of options here.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
What I’d like is for you to go to hell and leave me and my wife alone. “My point is, it’s hard for me to think with you watching over my shoulder.”
She narrows her eyes. “Are you suggesting I leave?”
“It’s just, you know how some people can’t pee if someone else is standing in the stall next to them? I’m like that when it comes to computer stuff.”
“Fine,” she says, surprising me.
I heave a sigh of relief.
“But it will cost you an hour.”
My relief experiences an extinction-level event. “What?”
“I’ll go, but I’m reducing your deadline from two hours to one.”
The knife’s edge on which I’m balanced starts to slice into my feet. I want to protest, to tell Shepard there’s no way I can pull this off in an hour, but I desperately need her gone, and if that means appealing to her sociopathic tendencies, then so be it.
“OK.”
“You understand,” Shepard says, “if you’re not done when I get back, I’ll call Donald and tell him Alana’s back on the menu.”
I gulp down the leaden lump in my throat. “I understand.”
“All right, I’ll play along.” She sets a timer on her phone. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Peter.”
So do I.
I watch her leave, then swivel nervously back toward the computer and open the command prompt, praying all the while that my victory isn’t as Pyrrhic as it feels.
I’ve always been hugely paranoid about getting hacked, so in our early garage days I had Bradley teach me how to make folders unsearchable. In theory I know exactly where to look for the missing program files, because no matter the operating system, I always hide everything in the same place.
Of course, this is all contingent on whether I’m Peter 1. Shepard certainly believes I am, and I’m like nighty nine percent certain I’m not Peter 2, the one currently stuck in the submersion tank. Save for the action hero theatrics and the fact that I have no memory of ever setting foot in this chamber before today, the security feed presents a compelling amount of visual evidence to support her belief.
I take a deep breath and type in the folder path.
Five seconds later, an encrypted zip file appears.
I smile to myself as I type in the password. When Cassie was five, Alana taught her how to speak Pig Latin. Cassie was obsessed with it, and spent weeks responding to us using only Pig Latin. Years later, when Evie was around the same age, Cassie taught it to her. The girls would run around the house rapid-firing Pig Latin at one another. It drove me crazy. But it also stuck with me, and I wound up using the language for one of the puzzles in Scorchfell.
I also use it for encryption keys.
january242001fiddler*sgreen – otherwise known as the month, day, year, and name of the restaurant where Alana and I had our first official date – translated into Pig Latin looks like anuaryjay242001iddler*sfayeengray
The zip drive opens.
I’m in, and also feeling quite smug that these DARPA supergeeks got outclassed by the likes of me.
Inside the zip drive is a single folder labeled VirtualCorps. That must be the name Peter 2 gave the VR simulation. Not the snazziest title, but then anything fun and creative probably got overruled by O’Laughlin and Shepard.
As I open the VirtualCorps folder, I feel the hair-raising tingle of déjà vu, like I’ve been here before and done this already.
I look up at the dormant wall screen above me.
What the hell were you really doing here, Peter?
There are dozens of folders nestled within the main VirtualCorps one. Each of these sub-folders are packed with a cra-pton of files, everything from data and storyboards and motion capture to images and audio and animation, all the little bits and bytes that make up the beating virtual heart of VirtualCorps.
There’s no way I can study each and every file in less than an hour. Luckily, I don’t need to study them. I can just run repair on the busted ones, then make them unsearchable again and hold them for ransom until I have proof that Alana’s safe.
It’s a shitty plan, but right now it’s all I’ve got.
Out of creative curiosity, I click on an animation folder, double-click the first file, and stare in horrified disbelief at the box of gibberish that appears on the screen.
I double-click the next file, then the next, then the one after that. Toggling back into the main folder, I open the motion capture folder, and click on those files.
But no matter which one I open, they all show the same thing.
A large text box full of gibberish symbols.
Every single file has been corrupted.
I glance at the submersion pods in confusion. If all the files are corrupted, the simulation should have totally crashed. James and his team should be dead. But they’re not.
Something else is going on here. I have no idea what, though, and something tells me an hour is nowhere near enough time to figure it out.
Still, I start trying to repair the corrupted files so I at least have some form of bargaining chip. But much to my eternal dismay, nothing works. Changing the file format or using a different program to open the top file does nothing. Neither does opening the command prompt screen and running system and disk scans.
Virus, malware, logic bomb. Pick your digital sabotage of choice, it really doesn’t matter. Whatever Peter 1 did to corrupt the files, whether accidental or purposeful, was thorough.
The VirtualCorps training simulation is toast.
All of a sudden, my usefulness has been greatly diminished. If I can’t fix this, Shepard has no reason to keep me alive. No reason to keep Alana alive.
Shit shit shit shit shit.
I have to get out of here. I have to get to Alana. Now, before the inevitable countdown commences.
But how?
I cast about the room. Peter 2, James, and the other soldiers float in their pods, oblivious to the outside world. Above the flywheel door, which Shepard made sure to let me know she’d be locking from the outside, the security camera lens reflects the glow from the pods like Sauron’s baleful eye, ever watchful, ever ready to bring all of Mordor, or in this case DARPA, down on me.
I glance back at the computer. In theory I could download another VR game and attempt to sync it with Deep Dive. But one, I can’t access the Internet from here. And two, swapping out simulations might very well kill everyone still connected to Deep Dive. As much as I want to get home, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I knowingly sentenced Peter 2 and the Rangers to death.
Even so, if I don’t find some way out of this mess, Alana and I are going to run out of lives. But so far as I can tell I’m trapped in this mad scientist’s lair with no feasible means of escape. The computer has zero access to the outside world, and the only door is locked from the outside. If it was electronic, I might be able to hotwire it, but the flywheel is straight-up old-school brute strength tech.
It’s a no-win situation, the tic-tac-toe scene in War Games when Joshua says to David, “The only winning move is not to play.” Except I have to play, because if I don’t, I’m a goner.
I glance at my unconscious doppelgänger. If I was a bastard, I’d figure out a way to use him, James, and the others as hostages. But I’m not a bastard, not completely, and if Finn got wind that I was threatening to harm the Rangers, a hundred Shepards wouldn’t be able to prevent him from using his machine gun to turn me into Swiss cheese.
Defeated, I plop down into the computer chair, glaring at the corrupted files taunting me from the monitor. Well, there’s only one option left.
Beg.
Fall on my knees once again and beg.
As I spin around in the chair like a man about to take his last walk down death row, a loud metallic clang sounds throughout the room, echoing like a gong and startling me into stillness.
A second clang follows the first, and with a ponderous creak, the flywheel door glides open.
Speak of the Shepard and the Shepard appears.
I tense, fully expecting her, Finn, or O’Laughlin.
As it turns out, it’s none of them.
“What are you–” I start to say, but Reggie presses a finger to her lips, then raises her other hand and points something at the security camera.
There’s a barely audible click.
The light on the security camera goes out.
Holy shit.
Is Reggie here to rescue me?
“Shepard and O’Laughlin are in a meeting, so we have about twenty minutes before they realize something’s wrong with the feed,” she says, marching toward me like a vengeful guardian angel. “I jammed the elevator door, which should buy us a little more time, but I’m pretty sure Shepard has a way down here that only she and O’Laughlin know about, so this has to be quick.”
Pushing up out of my chair, I say, “I wasn’t sure if I’d scared you off earlier, but seriously, thank you for–”
I don’t have a chance to finish thanking her.
With her next stride, Reggie reaches me, draws back her arm, and cold-cocks me right in the face.
Pain blossoms in my left cheek, spreading along my jaw as I stumble, trip over the chair, and narrowly avoid cracking my head on the computer desk as I hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud.
“What the hell!” I shout, cupping my cheek. It comes out more like a muffled Ut eh ell!
“You asshole,” she hisses, looming over me, fists clenched, jaw set, eyes ablaze with fury, her very pregnant belly protruding like a boulder about to tumble off Mount Manasa and crush me where I sit. “One time wasn’t enough for you?”
To say that I’m perplexed by Reggie’s angry question is like saying Cassie and Evie have a passing affection for pancakes.
“Ut r u alking a-out?” I burble. Wincing, I rub my cheek and say, “One time what?”
“Don’t play dumbass with me,” Reggie says, stepping forward like she’s about to use my head as a soccer ball. “I stuck my neck out for you once already. I am not saving your ass a second time.”
“A second time? Look, I’m sorry if you’re pissed off at me for all that manipulative stuff I said back in the MRI room, but I don’t think it merits getting sucker-punched.”
“It merits a whole lot more than a sucker-punch.” She shakes her head, grabs the chair, and lowers herself carefully into it.
I work my clicking jaw back and forth a few times, trying to decide if anything’s broken. “I don’t know if you noticed,” I say, “but I’m a little out of my element here. It might help us both if you started at the beginning.”
Reggie studies me, her left side painted with the pink glow of Peter 2’s suspension pod. “The truck,” she says.
“Truck? What truck? My truck? Are you talking about when Doran kidnapped me?”
“Jesus.” Reggie shakes her head, folds her hands on top of her stomach. “How do you not remember any of this?”
I scoot back and recline my head against the desk. “Hey, if it helps, Shepard doesn’t believe me, either. But I’m telling you the truth.”
As I say this, though, my brain tingles with an unreachable itch of dormant memories begging to be scratched.
