The Beam: Season One (68 page)

Stupid Isaac
. If Micah “thought Nicolai might call” after years of radio silence, that could only mean that Isaac had already blabbed news to his brother, probably in a vain hope for sympathy. The idiot worked so fast to disembowel himself.
 

“Then you know,” said Nicolai, not bothering with pleasantries. He’d never been truly acrimonious with Micah despite his wariness, but Micah respected precision. Being direct served both of Nicolai’s goals: getting business over with quickly and refraining from being pleasant to the man who’d tried to kill one of his friends. Or maybe two.

“Yes,” said Micah. “Isaac and Natasha came over last night. She was in one of her huffs. You know how she gets. Isaac was a mess. He said you’d quit and that you were probably heading over to join me on the dark side.”
 

“Not
join you
, really…”
 

“You know what I mean. But what would be amusing if it weren’t so tragic is that Natasha is planning to shift, too.”
 

“Natasha is going to shift?” That was a shock. But also, it wasn’t a shock at all. She’d started as Enterprise and had only switched for Isaac. She could also be a spiteful bitch.

“Looks that way. Not a good week for Team Isaac.” Micah chuckled.
 

“Look, I wanted to offer you a deal,” said Nicolai. “My Shift would be big news for you, right?”
 

“That had, in some small way, occurred to me,” said Micah, still chuckling.
 

“Well, I’ll talk all about it for you. Do a press conference and everything. I’ll even stand right up there beside you if you want, and I’ll say…”
 

Nicolai could imagine Micah waving his hands in an impatient gesture as he cut Nicolai off. “… if I’ll just wait until after Shift to make my brother look like a fool. Right?”
 

Nicolai tapped two fingers on the piano, annoyed at Micah’s foresight. Eventually, he said, “Right.”

“Of course. That’s no problem at all.
You
yourself
are the prize, Nicolai. Not the timing, or a political advantage. I got what I wanted. Even got my sister-in-law as a bonus, though I don’t know if Natasha counts as a ‘bonus.’ ” And for the third time, he gave that infuriating little chuckle. The chuckle said he’d known exactly what was going to happen and was amused to see the inevitable play on its stage, watching pawns in his game feigning choice.
 

“I’m out of politics, Micah. No offense, but I don’t want to work for you.” He thought of Kai, Doc, and the blood on Micah’s hands. “I don’t want to work
for
Enterprise at all. I just want to shift
to
Enterprise.”
 

“I understand,” said Micah. “I figured as much. But again, it doesn’t matter. Do you remember how hard I lobbied to get you to join us all those years ago? I know how much it tempted you, too. But you were too loyal. You were like a mouse who feels he owes something to the trap because it gave him cheese.”

“I remember you lobbying,” said Nicolai, sidestepping Micah’s conception of his loyalty to Isaac as a trap.

“You were
meant
to be Enterprise, Nicolai. It was a crime seeing you in Directorate. I’ve seldom known anyone more naturally Enterprise than you. Except for me, of course. And your father… had he lived to see the birth of Enterprise.”

Nicolai felt his hand slip on the piano. He slid backward, ramming his hip into its side. Something inside the great instrument tinkled on impact.
 

“I’m sorry?”
 

“Your father. Salvatore. It broke my heart to watch you slowly die in Directorate, Nicolai. I know you don’t want to work for me, and that’s okay. It’s enough that you’ll be where you should have been all along. Maybe the things you’ll be able to do in Enterprise will change the world, like your father’s inventions.”
 

Nicolai, feeling dizzy, slid along the piano’s length and slumped onto its bench. He felt levels of vertigo stack high above him. He hadn’t breathed a word of his father since seeing him dead on the ground. He hadn’t told the Ryans (or anyone else in the NAU) about his father’s business, his immense wealth, or even his name. And
nobody
knew about his inventions. Nicolai himself hadn’t even known about them for more than half his time in Italy, and had only found them by accident because sometimes an inventor’s teenage son manages to gain access that even the AISE (or the American CIA, for that matter) can’t get. He’d been told his father was a professor, and even after he’d learned that his father worked for Allegro Andante (but not what he did for them), Nicolai had been told to keep telling the professor lie to his friends. Only decades later did Nicolai manage to piece the puzzle together, finally understanding the gadgets in his father’s usually-locked study and in the so-called “arsenal room” his father had explained he’d only be able to access in an emergency. As best he could tell, Allegro had had an ironclad NDA with his father. Salvatore invented, and Allegro Andante would publish (once the technology was ready) without giving him credit. The untold millions of Euros in the family’s bank account must have been Allegro’s way of making up for stealing Salvatore’s rightful fame.
 

But then the chaos had begun, and his father’s inventions had never been released. Salvatore had died in his living room, and Nicolai himself had burned the mansion and all it contained. When he later saw hovering objects in the NAU, he assumed Allegro Andante (which had burned to cinders too; he’d trekked to Rome and seen the shell) had leaked some gadgets before expiring. But regardless of how those gadgets had made it overseas, Salvatore Costa’s name wouldn’t have been on any.
 

“What do you know about my father’s inventions?” said Nicolai. He felt weak. It had been seventy years since he’d found his family slaughtered in their mansion on the hill, but now it was as if he could see their bodies laid out in front of him. He closed his eyes. Behind his lids, blood flowed. A house burned.
 

“I know they don’t get the credit they deserve,” said Micah.
 

“You mean
he
didn’t get the credit
he
deserved,” said Nicolai.
 

“That too, yes. But also the inventions themselves. They were more than just hovering bots, you know. Your father suspected the potential of hovertech. I never knew him, of course, but my grandfather did. My family had ties to some powerful people in Italy at the time, and I’ve heard the stories. Making things float!” He laughed. “Yes, it’s a neat little novelty. Think of all of the kitchen floors saved from the ravages of scraping chair legs! Think of the advances in sweeping under ottomans! And finally: flying cars. How long have we been promised flying cars, Nicolai? Every science fiction film I’ve found from the twentieth century promised us flying cars, and finally we got them. The world rejoiced. Am I right?”
 

Nicolai felt blind-sided and punch-drunk by the line of discussion. He’d seen the flying cars, the hovering ottomans, and all sorts of other things that floated. He’d been secretly proud of each, but only in his own little way. Those things hadn’t exactly changed the world.
 

Micah, not waiting for a response, went on.

“But what not a lot of people know — but which I know because my grandfather’s company was among the first to work with hovertech in the States — was that hovertech nanobots were the first to use an intuitive distributed network. See, your father didn’t just want things to float. He wanted his nanobots to be able to respond to commands, to move around, to float various different objects as needed. Simple to solve, right? Just add processors. But the problem is that nanobots are just too damn small, and when people tried to give them more than the most rudimentary processors — and I do mean
rudimentary
, on par with using a rock as a can opener — they became way too large to do their jobs. So your father asked a question: what if he modeled the human brain? The brain isn’t just one big chunk; it’s a collection of discreet neurons that all work together to create thought. So to make his bots compute, Salvatore found a way to spread the processing functions out over
many
bots instead of giving a complete processor to
each
bot. Just like neurons in a brain. A single neuron isn’t very useful, but if you get a ton of them together and they work in harmony with each doing a little bit of the work… well, then they can become damn intelligent. Intelligent enough, in hovertech’s case, to come up with their own intuitive goals. Intelligent enough to farm raw materials from their environments and build other kinds of nanobots to help them as those goals demanded.”

Nicolai fought to keep his bearing. Micah might be bullshitting, but in general, Micah Ryan didn’t bullshit. He
lied
, but he didn’t bullshit. There was a difference.

“Without your father’s work,” said Micah, “we’d have been sunk. Literally, in some cases. Hoverbots kept the levees in place so that District Zero could be saved when the oceans rose. Bots ran the desalinators, giving us clean water. But I don’t need to tell you about all the things that intelligent nanobots do today, Nicolai. You’ve got plenty in your own system. You should be proud, my friend. Salvatore Costa’s work saved the NAU and made our way of life possible. Hell, even The Beam’s evolution was facilitated by the pollination effect.”

Nicolai remained silent. Micah had won. Nicolai wasn’t even sure what game they were playing… but whatever it was, Micah had the medal. He felt all of his moments collapse into one disorderly pile. And to think: he’d believed he was in control of his life all along.
 

“You still there, Nicolai?” said Micah.
 

“Of course.”

“You’re so quiet.”
 

“I’m just… my father’s work was very secret. His name wasn’t supposed to be on anything. The work itself wasn’t even supposed to be released because they never quite finished before the riots and wars broke out. I’ve looked it all up. The company was run by a bunch of isolationists. They had this vision of turning Italy into the next Japan, wanting Italy to command hovertech the way Japan commanded the electronics market at the time. I don’t even understand why they released it. Did they release it to your grandfather?”
 

Micah laughed a bitter sort of laugh. “Oh, no. They were very protective of it. It was like you said: nothing for the
Americani
until it was finished and they had gotten their big head start. Believe me, my grandfather’s people tried to convince them. They tried
hard
. I’ll even tell you a little secret, now that it’s no longer fresh news: they were ready to
steal
it from them. But then, like you said… the wars. And then Allegro Andante was no more.”

“Then my father…”
 

“He wouldn’t budge either,” said Micah, “and they tried hard to persuade
him
, too.”

“Then how did it get here?” he said.
 

Micah gave another chuckle. For the briefest of moments, Nicolai closed his eyes. In the darkness, he saw the mansion burn in a fire of white phosphorous. He saw his family’s bodies laid out on the living room floor like macabre trophies. He saw himself alone, at seventeen, surviving the massacre — finally able to access the arsenal and its microscopic wonders once the others were dead. In his mind’s eye, he watched the last Costa walk away with only a few scant belongings and a crossbow like a voyager heading off into an unknown wilderness. Like a pilgrim heading off on a pilgrimage. Like a heroic warrior heading off on a quest.
 

“You
brought it to us,” Micah told him.

Or like Typhoid Mary, off to seed a plague.

WANT MORE?

The Beam
continues in
Season Two
… but this is actually a
whole world
, full of twists.
 

Here are three Beam-world books you may enjoy:

If you want to know what happens next …

The Beam: Season Two

The rabbit hole goes even deeper as the core
Beam
series continues in Season Two. You’ll find out what Nicolai’s revelation means for the NAU, how Doc keeps himself hidden, and more. A new elite class has surfaced as Shift approaches. The balance of power has begun to tip … and you’ll want to be there when it does.
 

GET IT HERE:
http://realmandsands.com/b1beams2

+++

If you enjoy plots and schemes (and are just a little bit bold) …

The Future of Sex

This companion series by author Lexi Maxxwell is set in 2063, just as the Crossbrace network is giving way to The Beam. It follows Chloe Shaw, new recruit to the monolithic O corporation — an industry giant that’s turned sexuality away from human connection and into a commodity. Sex has become a cyberpunk video game where anything is possible … but in Chloe Shaw, O has found a technological prodigy they can neither predict nor control.

GET IT HERE:
http://realmandsands.com/b1fos

+++

If you want to know all about The Beam itself …

PLUGGED: How Hyperconnectivity and The Beam Changed the Way We Think

This fiction-as-nonfiction future history (written by the authors of the Beam under a pseudonym) chronicles the development of The Beam from its origins in the first computers of the 1970s through its use today, in 2097. You’ll see how the Internet made Crossbrace necessary, how Crossbrace evolved into The Beam from the inside out, and how The Beam fundamentally changed us as a species. True
Beam
fans won’t want to miss this one!

GET IT HERE:
http://realmandsands.com/b1plugged