Digital Venous (14 page)

Yes Captain

SHANE WAS DISCOVERED, through Telesync, to have been in contact with someone through ETP—without having a registered transmission recipient. Service information police paid Shane a visit to clarify the situation.

Although he was surprised at their level of knowledge, he knew right away why they were there. “Oh, I get so lonely… I use the ETP application ‘afterlife’ to contact my wife,” he lied. “Sometimes I feel she’s talking to me from beyond.”

The afterlife application was well-known for accessing stored information from a client’s conversations and posts and being able to create virtual, realistic conversations from them. “Just until I get over it… self-indulgent, I know.”

“That’s not what we’re talking about, Captain Wing.”

“Oh, I do it with my son too,” said Shane.

“But your son couldn’t access ETP, so what do you mean?”

“Well, I can still hear his voice, so I talk to him,” Shane lied.

“Why is it that we have records of you receiving links from an unknown source?”   “I have no idea how or what your records… certainly very strange—I mean, obviously I can’t actually talk to my wife or my son—not in reality… it doesn’t make any sense.” Shane had quite a reputation as a smart and tough, if ruthless, guard. The two policemen wanted to believe him. But they were suspicious. After all, this man had gone against the strictest Napean code.

One of the guards said: “Maybe it was your use of the ‘afterlife’ program that was picked up—though that’s unheard of. Only other explanation would be: did your son ever practice any form of electro-telepathy?” The guards were receiving cues from their superior.

“No,” said Shane. “He was only ten years old; he wouldn’t have even known what that meant.” The officer, using ETP, said, “I just checked with Aaron at HQ. He says the afterlife software should never be used in tandem with ETP at all.”

“Okay, then. I’m sorry… it’s just my grief… I’m still… that boy was my…”

“It’s okay, Captain Wing. We understand.”

After a significant pause, Shane said quietly: “Will that be all, men?”

Ryan I.N.

THE SERVICE HAD very nearly discovered Shane’s telepathic activity with his son. Fearing for Ryan’s safety, Shane had tried to tell him that they couldn’t talk for a while but had had trouble making contact.

Coincidentally, during this period, Alia, Wez, and Madi were hoping to use Ryan’s talents to access Service information. Without regular contact with his father, Ryan became less wary of using the Napean network. He began to walk more confidently in that world as a free agent. He saw and heard many strange things because he moved around largely unnoticed by the inhabitants. Sometimes ETP users felt a presence, saw movement in the very structures and colors around them. But Ryan was never found out. He was like a spirit wandering in a busy hotel.

But, likewise, Ryan himself was blind to many things. Without Iris Navigation, the virtual signposts, in the Napean network were missing or not visible to him. This was where he had to work in tandem with Alia, who had charted some of the main navigational routes on the Iris lens. She had been there before, and although things looked very different for Ryan, she was able to guide him through some areas of the labyrinth. They hoped Ryan would have access to the whole network and like a ghost maybe he could walk through some important doors.

Alia explained to Ryan, “We want to stop some very unfair things from happening. The Service use the network—Telesync—to stop the Napean women from having their own babies.”

“That’s why they take real babies?” asked the boy.

“Well done. Exactly,” said Alia. “When we find the launch site for this program we want to shut it down.”

“Oh,” said Ryan, “okay.”

“The other thing is,” continued Alia, “did you know that the Service use Napeans’ brains to store information about all the other planets and stars… because they want to leave Earth and they’re trying to find a better place to live?”

“I have heard of it…”

“Yes, but they don’t want to share information. We need to find out if we’re safe living here and if there are other planets we can go to. We need to look for these answers on the Napean network.”

“Dad said I wasn’t allowed to do that… but he didn’t know the Service was doing that! I know how to go to the network but I don’t know where all the different places are…”

“So what can you do?” asked Alia.

“Well, I can send messages to Dad just like everybody else can, ’cept they use a little machine to help them. I don’t. They can do much more than me, though. They can do anything … go places… talk to friends… play games… get medicine…”

Madi took over the explanation. “We have a lens and we can use it, but just like Napeans, we need to enter the system electronically—you, however, have telepathy and can get in—and actually, Ryan, you’re safe to use it because you’re invisible.”

“Ohhhh,” said Ryan, interested but visibly a little worried.

Madi tried to instill some confidence by providing some more detail. “There was a way we used to be able to use a borrowed lens, with a borrowed ID, but not anymore. It used to work just by sticking a micro camera in an eye… in a lens… but we just can’t get in anymore. You can, though…”

“Dad did say said that I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near Napean Service doorways or anything except talk to him. He said they could take me away.”

Madi struggled to hide her indignation. “That’s already happened, and look! You’re completely safe with us now. No one can take you away now!”

“Yeah, but Dad might get in trouble.”

“It’s only dangerous if you talk to someone like when you do with Dad,” Alia chipped in.

“Well, I haven’t talked to Dad for a while…”

“I think that’s a good idea, darling,” said Madi. “Because yes, they can hear that. But just quietly looking around—just like being in a big library, that’s all. You’re just there to get some information. And we can show you the way around! It’s perfectly safe!”

Bes added her support to the case: “You could be helping so many families, all the kids at Ginny and Ben’s. One day they might need a new planet too! You’d be a hero for finding out!”

The next morning, Madi and Alia helped to get Ryan comfortable and settled. “I need to think!” he said. “Dad taught me to do it properly. I have to relax…” He lay down on the couch, put his hand behind his head, and was still.

The house was absolutely silent, and they waited several minutes before Ryan said anything. “There’s a lot of people talking… lots of voices… oh, too many. I can’t understand anyone!”

“Keep trying, Ry—move towards one voice,” said Alia. “I can hear two people talking…”

“What are they saying?” asked Madi.

“Sound like two women… they’re talking abou ... sex.”

The women all laughed.

“Situation normal,” said Alia. “Ryan, try and leave that area. Can you see a door or a window?”

Once again Ryan began to feel like he was in a room, sensing a confined space, soft walls. Over to one side he saw a familiar dark shape—a hole, a door.

“The only thing I can see is a hole over there. I can still hear lots of different voices. People are talking to each other. They sound happy.”

Alia said, “Go to the hole, step through it into the next space.” Ryan did as he was told. He stopped in front of the dark recess and heard that same hissing sound like a breeze blowing into the hole. He thought he could see glimmers of light through the hole.

“It’s too dark. I can’t see the ground.” He froze.

Alia reassured him, “Step in, Ryan—you’ll be absolutely fine—I’ve done it before myself…”

As he stepped through it felt as if someone had pushed him from behind; he was dragged forward, and then standing in a space with the same dusky light as the previous one. Wez and Bes quietly entered the room. Ryan was lying on the couch. His eyes were open and darted around as if in REM sleep. Sometimes his hands moved as if attached to strings of some puppeteer. He didn’t seem conscious of anything in the room.

Inside the network, Ryan could sense the walls though he couldn’t see them. It was dark but light enough to see that the floor had a hexagonal shape. On each side of the hexagon there was a vague darkened patch big enough for him to walk through, just like the other doorway. There were five doorways in front of him.

Ryan described his surroundings to Alia and she said: “You’re in the ‘front room’ of IN

–              it’s like the gateway to the all other areas, the five other areas. You entered through the ETP door.

“Is there any writing at all anywhere?” asked Wez. “No.”

“Damn,” said Wez. “He can access the space but nothing is signposted. All right, well, if he just came from ETP, look at the map.” Wez scrambled for the map.

“Here we go,” he said. “First one to the left is population…”

Alia added slowly, “Second one is news and the third one is medical. Four is recreation; five should be
Telesync
data. So Ryan, turn to your right and go through that door. It should contain all Service information and star system data.”

He repeated the same process as before. “I’m in there. There are still no signs.”

“Okay,” said Alia. “This is the order; there are another six doors, right, Ryan?”

“Yes.”

“To your left is
medical,
then
questions
… the third door should be
Service
. Go through that one.” Alia’s voice was calm and quiet.

Ryan walked across. Alia whispered to the others, “If he gets through this, we know we’re onto something—I couldn’t enter this section.”

“Ryan?”

“Yes?”

“Go through.”

“I am.” The women all looked at each other, wide-eyed. “What now?” he asked. “What does it look like?”

“There are no words; it’s like a brick wall, except it’s not hard, it’s very soft—there’s an outline of brick patterns, long thin bricks...”

“Data Caskets. We need to open them and read them.” Frustrated, Alia said to the others: “He should be able to read that stuff. Ryan, try and look inside one of the bricks.”

“How?”

“I don’t know; grab it, push it, twist it—each one of those small rectangles contains tons of information.”

“They’re not moving.” He sounded stressed.

“It’s okay, darling, don’t worry about it—it’s time to come out now, anyway.” Madi turned. “I think that will be enough for one day.”

Alia looked at them both and said, “It might be time to defrost the last lens. We’ve got to—looks like nothing’s labeled without it. That way he can go back in tomorrow. Put on the lens when he gets into the Service area—just in case.”

The Peoples’ Service

ABOVE NEARLY EVERY Napean city was a space station. There were only ten Service officials operating the Australian Napean cities. Three controlled the Napean population in the Napean city of Lofty Mountain.

They had been there from the very beginning. Because of their extended lives, they had combined their understandings of the various essential areas of scientific study. Up until that point in history, in the twenty-first century, scientists gained expertise in only one specific field, such as physics or biology. But with the Napean revolution, one person now had the time to become the master of many crafts and, with this overview, develop new forms of ingenuity. Known only by their surnames—Magellan, Pato, and Jeffery—these overseers were experts in cellular biology, genetics, maths, physics, and astronomy.

Around the world there were some fifty of them, and since the advent of the environmental disasters—and in some cases before—each had amassed huge fortune and personal power.

Service officials were able to examine their own Napean population as one organism. Telesync demonstrated the population’s function, health and memory usage all at once. Results could be analyzed quickly and areas of underperformance or irregularity isolated for treatment. This of course meant individual people and their bodies. Most treatments were undertaken without the individual being aware that they even had a problem.

The Service had continued to use the Subs while at the same time publicly denigrating and even facilitating their demise. While the subs laboured in building and mining, they risked suffering blindness, exposure, radiation sickness; many also died from accidents caused by machinery malfunction or falls.

Service politics were crude and ruthless. Their official line was that Subs were stopping the progress of humanity. The Service put out regular updates showing the ways in which Subterraneans were jeopardizing the future. They published information on the excessive use of water and electricity, or their inability to manage their waste. They used phony characters on public ETP forums to add fuel to their polemic:

“Subterraneans only want immediate gratification and cannot see that for the good of all people we need to think long term. Subs are regressive, undeveloped and motivated by their own selfish needs. They want ‘food now,’ despite knowing that the planet cannot afford to produce food anymore. They want children despite the fact that we do not have the resources to increase the population.  Subs want to live the ancient way yet come crawling to us for health care and protection.”

Yet another public statement on ETP from the Service on “the Subterranean Problem” ran:

“They hold a sentimental desire for all things “old world” in a time when none of us can afford to be looking backwards. This is not a democracy. The modern Napean city exists only because of the vision and expertise of a few great Napean minds and the willingness of a great many others to put aside their fears and nostalgia and think practically of the future. This is the success of the Napean state. The Subs are frankly lucky to have been tolerated at all. In some other Napean states, this is not the case. The concept that Napeans are now in some way morally responsible to ensure their survival is nonsense.”

The Napeans gave themselves permission to ridicule, abduct, torture, and generally abuse Subterraneans. Some Napeans even turned it into a sport. Yet the Service was surprised when the Subs fought back. The anxiety virus came as a shock—it had been completely unexpected.