01

01

a novel

by

Alberto Barrera

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Smashwords Edition

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Copyright 2012 Alberto Barrera. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Copy Editor: Stephanie Mitchell

Cover Art Design: Copyright 2012, Alberto Barrera

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01

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To all those who have lived underground

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Take my hand, for I shall guide you out of the shadows,

no matter how charged with torments the escape,

and you will find the daylight.

Love, the Power Supreme

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. SkeyeView

Chapter 2. EMAI

Chapter 3. Nina

Chapter 4. Argura

Chapter 5. VegaLabs

Chapter 6. EarthSfera

Chapter 7. Lucas

Chapter 8. 50T

Chapter 9. Ingested

Chapter 10. 01

Chapter 11. Firewall

Chapter 12. Hacked

Chapter 13. Grid

Chapter 14. Actidome

Chapter 15. Ektrom

Chapter 16. Upgrade

Chapter 17. Machine Battle

Chapter 18. Tempted

Chapter 19. Minefield

Chapter 20. Pineal

Appendix

About the Author

I wish to express sincere appreciation to all my family and friends for their unwavering support and especially to my dad, of course.

To my mom, the star above, in loving memory

Chapter 1. SkeyeView

A holographic spy-satellite image of planet Earth descended over Manhattan, the city’s layout of streets and skyscrapers like wired components on a computer circuit board.

You can’t survive the grid alone.

I fend for myself.

These panting voices, coupled with the sounds of footsteps in pursuit, strummed over the static of a radio scanner. The live view from space zoomed into a polluted New York night and arced clockwise over the edge of the skyline, sailing to the south end of Central Park.

Twenty-foot walls coated in soot enclosed the park’s simmering grounds. Mountains of electronic junk towered over a pungent haze peeking out at intervals to the north, and incinerators crackled, their molten puddles breathing out toxic fumes into a swelling mist.

A reticle like that of a riflescope sight flashed on the satellite’s display. It probed the wasteland of solder fumes, of metal and plastic remains, until it locked on a lone figure racing along the pathways: a warping specter in tattered clothes and backpack, his rotting canvass shoes skipping over streams of leachate seeping from the landfills.

All units expedite, blared an operator’s voice over the scanner. Suspect just crossed the 65th Street Transverse.

Copy.

A squad of soldiers clad in black, pliable exoskeleton suits fanned out across the park, tracking the runaway figure as he dodged the sweeping beams of their laser-guided dart guns. Shots popped in the night, and needle-sharp slugs outfitted with blinking electronic sensors streaked along the light beams. The runner swerved and lurched and the darts hissed by him, sinking into the junk mounds, ricocheting off the damp ground near his bolting feet.

Damn, he’s fast, called out a commander on the run.

We’ll get him at the wall.

Ocular interfaces mounted over the soldiers’ left eye sockets pulsed with lights, their receivers relaying the satellite’s perspective on map displays etched on their corneal layers. They tracked the target as he slid over a coat of frozen sludge on Wollman’s Rink.

Crossing into the Pond minefield, announced the operator.

The satellite view lit up with markers charting the location of anti-personnel landmines scattered along the grounds. The runner skipped and weaved without breaking stride, dodging half-buried APLs as he charged towards the banks of the park’s South Pond.

He knows the layout.

They followed him into the minefield, their steps less bold than his, their eyes shifting between the digital guides on their eye displays and the ground in front of them. One soldier’s feet wavered. He lost his balance.

Watch your step, someone screamed at him over a headset.

His boot planted at an angle. The sound of a mine’s activated clip echoed in the night, and an explosion lit up the grounds, hurling the soldier ten feet high.

A hail of darts sprayed the field. The suspect cleared the laser gauntlet and drove towards the park’s stone wall, wedging his fingers and toes into gouged-out crimp rails on the facade. Three, four strides and he climbed to the ledge overlooking midtown. Bordering buildings blackened by the soot, some listing or otherwise crumbling, stretched the first few blocks along the avenues like charred shipwrecks, and nary a soul dared into the night.

Only beyond those gritted structures did the first weeds begin to crawl through the cracked pavement and hints of mossy growths peek above water level on the riverbanks on either side of Manhattan.

The suspect squatted atop the wall, the city before him so draped in ash it seemed in mourning. His eyes rose to the fog-hidden rooftops and tilted down the rusting towers to a bronze statue on the street below. Bolivar’s sculpture, grated and tarnished by the scouring air, still rode his steed at the park’s Artist Gate. The runner hopped from the ledge onto its caped shoulders, lowering himself to the pedestal base, looking up at the statue’s stern gaze.

Then he dropped to the ground and raised a hand to the carved plaque on the monument. Chipped and stained. Barely legible.

Bo-li-var, he labored to read. El Li-ber-ta-dor. He glanced up at him. The Liberator. Then tapped the monument’s base. We need you and George.

Now one soldier had reached the ledge and squared himself sniper-like, firing stingers that whispered into the night. A single dart punctured the sprinter’s backpack, ripping it at the seams. Dozens of electronic parts scavenged from the landfills spilled over the rain-battered pavement. The projectile’s sensor dangled there, taillight flashing, squirting a glowing goop from its hypodermic barb.

Forget the contraband. The suspect fled, sprinting down the avenues and into narrowing alleys, high-stepping it over crumbling brick and mortar.

Two other soldiers, an officer and a cadet, cleared the wall and landed on the street, their uniforms emblazoned with a logo on their chests—an Omega with a narrow bulls-eye in its center. The officer scanned the landscape through his interface, but found no suspect. He switched to a green night-vision mode. Only computer parts lay scattered about the wet ground.

Where is he? His eyes swung up to the sky as if invoking some higher power.

The lights of a series of satellites floated in the vault of the night, and their live feed plunged once again from the heavens like a winged beast, swinging past the soldiers, tracking down the suspect through deserted side streets slathered in wet ash. The reconnaissance images relayed into the men’s interfaces, their corneal layers displayed them, and they set out again after the runner, combat boots spattering puddles as they dodged the littered hulls of jalopies, crushed garbage cans and spooked alley cats. They gained ground on him, until a maze of scaffolds along a deserted block of buildings slowed them down. The suspect slipped with ease through buckled tubing and wooden slats sharp as knifes. The structure shook with the pounding of the chase. Years of dust went airborne. A section sank. Something creaked high above, and a jagged piece of glass fell onto the young cadet’s shoulder. It knocked him over and bounced off his exoskeleton, shattering next to him. He rose and checked himself, the uniform merely scratched where he should have been pierced through.

They ran ahead.

The satellite transmission soared into the night until suspect and soldiers were but pixels zigzagging along the Manhattan grid. Ahead of them, a digital marker flickered and buzzed with alarm.

He’s turning west on 57th, announced the operator. That’s a dead-end street. The satellite image zoomed in again on the city. It swerved through the canyons between the buildings and fell in step with the officer.

I got him, he replied into his mic, struggling to reload darts on the run. He fumbled the gun but sprang ahead, inching towards his target. So close now, he reached out, his fingertips grazing the dart still dangling from the suspect’s backpack.

The figure swayed his shoulders, escaping the officer’s grasp with a leap that arched him over a water canal. The satellite tracked him in midair, circling around him, following him as he dropped into the mouth of an open manhole. His hands and feet clung froglike to the rails of a bolted service ladder, and he slid down the shaft into the depths of the city’s tunnels.

The satellite view probed deep into the manhole like some unearthly endoscope, detecting but a glimpse of the suspect as he looked up the pitch-black flue. His pupils dilated wide as cat’s eyes in that blinding darkness, the only light that of the blinking dart still clinging to him. He unstrapped the backpack saturated in the glopping fluid, and his fingers eased out the sensor. A four-letter acronym crowned by the Omega-point logo flashed under the bulb.

E.M.A.I., he read, and looked up the shaft. Actias.

Water was pouring through rifts in the surface as the officer reached the edge of the manhole, gasping for air. You’re fast. He swept his laser beam down the shaft. You could work with us.

I’m not a machine, said the suspect, dropping the blinking dart into the layer of muck on the tunnel floor. When he crushed it with his foot, the tracking blip faded on both the satellite view and the soldier’s ocular display.

Positioning device scrubbed, called out the operator.

The live image withdrew from the manhole. It held above the officer on the street and rocketed skyward, through the poisoned cloud layer and into the night. New York’s lights refracted in the distance, and the city shifted back to its circuit-board veneer.

Then the image pulled back further, spaceward, until the world shrank and floated dull and gray amidst the darkness of space.

Chapter 2. EMAI

Nothing was green. Manhattan’s skyline smoldered under a slush cloud, the foul canopy pierced here and there by shafts of light emitted by the orbiters that had patrolled the island since the Great Cyberwar. Such was the view from EMAI, a single massive structure forged into the rock bed on Roosevelt Island. Its plated walls shone through the haze onto the murky waters of the East River, with floors overlapping in layers that looked like feathered eagle wings on either end. At its rising center, two sets of tinted panoramic windows faced slightly to the north. From the city, a slanting bridge projected across the current to bisect the complex, reaching into its underbelly. And in its front courtyard, a large geodesic sphere marked with the Omega-point logo seemed to hold the entire structure aloft.

On the top floor of the building, behind its sweeping dark windows, was EMAI’s master console, a broad, crystal panel, almost invisible were it not for the graphics and live image windows flickering on its flat surface. There were no legs holding it to the floor, yet it floated sturdy and level, as if anchored by bolts. The desktop was bare except for a handheld microphone and joystick docked to a base near the edge.

One person sat behind it, his face bathed in sweat, making hand gestures that sorted the images on the workspace and scrolled through reams of hover text, swiping and flicking and double-tapping them across its sleek glass.

He held one snapshot under his fingertips and expanded it the length of the table. It was a paused video frame of the officer as he trailed the fleeing suspect outside Central Park, his face grimacing with exhaustion as he watched his target leap ahead. The clip resumed playing. The runner sailed through the air and dropped into the manhole, and the soldier behind stopped and bent over, panting.

As the operator navigating the live chase, he was just as responsible for the failed execution as the officer on the field. He even felt as tired, as if he had run with the soldier side by side, tracking and guiding him with the satellite’s drone-like feed. He zoomed in on the runaway; a blurred face in ragged clothes upon that dismal landscape. He pushed even closer, but the suspect’s image fragmented into pixels. Whoever he was, he had to give him credit. Escaping the exoskeleton-powered soldiers with their augmented strength and speed was a tall feat. A hint of a smile and a jerky nod almost revealed his admiration, and he glanced to his sides, lest someone had seen him.

He sat center-stage inside EMAI’s busy Command Control Center, flanked by rows and rows of multi-screen workstations flickering with their own satellite projections in live holograms. Images from Manhattan so real it seemed the controllers navigating them were walking alongside the citizens. Reticles on each tele-present display glided silent along the streets, locking in on unaware pedestrians, their personal histories displayed in digital images and text dossiers, recording, monitoring their existence like cosmic puppet masters. Folks long stripped of privacy, hunched and guarded, afraid to look up, the weight of such intrusion resting heavy over their shoulders.

In front of him, between the two enormous windows facing Manhattan, a theatre-size hologram played the live view of planet Earth as he had left it after zooming out of the suspect’s chase. A digital crawl topped the display with the heading ‘SKEYEVIEW.’

The rest of the staff inside the busy command center had been writhing in their chairs ever since the bald, hulking man in fatigues had entered the operations bridge. It was rare for Ektrom to abandon his warfare simulator dock in the geodesic globe outside—EMAI’s Holosphere—unless he was on sweep patrols across the city.

Hired by Actias to train EMAI’s paramilitary units, all but his face and smooth dome bore the marks of battle. Below his neck, keloid scars from knife, disease and gunfire bulged in knots as thick as hair braids, and tribal warrior tattoos outlined the ripped muscles on his arms.

He had come in to watch the chase.

No one inside Command Control had stepped away for food or drink, nor had they let their eyes wander off their holoscreens. The main operator could feel Ektrom’s breath, his body heat, the piercing albino eyes framed by the unmarked face.

They lost him again, he said, his clubbed fingers clutching at the operator’s neck.

Yes, sir.

How many times has he dodged us since SkeyeView’s inception?

Seven, sir.

Seven. Ektrom nodded, clawing deeper into the skin. In five years.

I believe we got a close-up this time, sir, the operator pleaded.

Show him to me.

The screen shuffled through thousands of frames, rewinding the soldiers’ chase sequence, until it settled on a blurred rear angle of the suspect in mid-stride. It tracked around him to a frontal view and zoomed in.

Enhance image. The pixilated still began to focus and sharpen.

The rest of the staff, tempted away from their screens, raised their eyes towards the master video wall.

Ektrom’s grip eased off the operator’s neck, and he walked around the console as the subject’s face rendered: a wiry youth, fifteen maybe, pale skin smudged with dirt and scattered bruises, his eyes, focused and bright, hiding behind unwashed locks of jet-black hair.

He’s a kid? said Ektrom, his hands palms up in front of him. It can’t be. He surveyed the command center. All eyes retreated into their screens.

He had been expecting some formidable rival. Who else could outwit Actias’s SkeyeView satellites for so long, outrun his scouts and trespass the high walls of the park? He wanted a good fight. He’d been warring for more than a quarter century, since the fall of America into autonomous quadrants after the Great Cyberwar. Never lost a fight. There was nothing nobler for him than combat. Single combat. The natural state of sentient beings, he thought. War. The ultimate generator of power.

But a kid? Such an unworthy challenge. He cringed. He must be in the database.

Running registry. The operator loaded a facial recognition platform on the display, scrolling through reams of mug shots.

Ektrom reached back for the console joystick and panned up and down the suspect’s image: the innocent face, the threadbare clothes, the sopping shoes, the ripped backpack with the remaining contraband.

The mug scan ran through and halted with a no-match buzz.

How many untracked people do you think we have inside the island? asked Ektrom.

He’s the only one.

Ektrom nodded. The operator set his hands over the console, and a virtual keyboard leapt out of the glass surface. It hovered beneath his fingertips, following the motion of his hands. He keyed in a few commands, and a title flashed above the kid’s picture:

‘SUSPECT 01’

Ektrom turned up to look at a glazed office window looming over the command center.

Behind it, two delegations sat opposite one another, bickering across a large boardroom table presided over by a frail man at its head: E.M. Actias. His gelled hair was parted low on one side near the ear and combed flat to his scalp towards the other; loose, Shar-Pei-like skin pulled both eyes to a droop behind thick pince-nez glasses. Despite his crouched shoulders and brittle frame, the elite soldiers standing behind him seemed to shy away from his gaze with both fear and respect.

The SkeyeView satellite platform must expand beyond the island’s limits, he said.

Across from him sat Marshall, the Ambassador for the Eastern Quadrant, backed by a security detail in military uniform. He shook his head. Not under your command. The other boroughs and the entire EQ won’t allow it, he said. EMAI has breached privacy laws in Manhattan beyond the criminal element.

There are no guarantees you won’t do the same on expansion, concurred Toran, his military attaché, as a map of North America’s Eastern Seaboard flickered on the wide glazed window facing the bustling command bridge below.

A live holographic image of Manhattan appeared on the middle of the table like a centerpiece. Beyond the island’s limits, there was nothing but black on all sides save for a label reading ‘E.Q.’

There’s been great lawlessness in the Eastern Quadrant since the war, said Actias. He pointed at the holoscreen. SkeyeView’s proprietary technology will crush the anarchy that has gripped your territory. The shot gained altitude, offering a wider view of Earth, its curvature against the darkness of space. Not to mention the rest of the planet.

Eyes met among the EQ delegation. You want to watch over the world? said Toran.

Actias did not answer.

The satellite transmission plunged through the clouds. It swept into the city and combed the streets until it crept through the fog of an isolated alley.

We’ve kept the residents of Manhattan secure under our watch, he said, as the image cleared out of the haze to reveal two men assaulting a young woman. One had his hand over her mouth, muffling her screams. The other dragged her past a steam burst into the shadows. SkeyeView followed, activating a night scope that closed in on them. Multi-screen reticles locked on all three as facial recognition markers covered their features. Dossier screens appeared next to each one of them; volumes of data with images of friends or family; clips of them at work and at play; medical histories; lists of their assets and possessions; and lengthy rap sheets on both men. A squad of Actian soldiers rushed in, raining blows on the assailants and carrying them off past the steam leak.

Only the officer stayed behind with the woman. His ocular interface lit up, as SkeyeView’s data relayed in and projected onto his corneal layer. He scrolled fast through her background check to an index highlighting a history of her online searches and paused at a single link: ‘THE PERILS OF THE SINGULARITY: Why A.I. must be programmed to serve mankind.’ The officer nodded over his shoulder, and two cadets charged in and seized her, her eyes wide with fear.

SkeyeView pulled out of the alley, and its reticle went on combing the city streets in stealth, locking on unaware pedestrians, running recognition checks.

At what price? said Marshall. He aimed a remote control at the wide glazed window separating them from the command center. We’ve seen the images of your residents.

A video ran with clips of sparsely populated city streets. Pedestrians, stooping and hiding their faces, their heads hung low in the drizzling soot blowing out of Central Park. They carry on like inanimate beings, haunted by the constant threat of SkeyeView’s prying eyes.

I offer security, Marshall, said Actias. Unlike in the EQ, everyone here is accounted for. We have nearly eradicated all crime.

Toran pointed at the images of beleaguered citizens on the EQ video. Look at them. Everyone would rather leave the island.

Not everyone. Many of your citizens still come into Manhattan, said Actias as SkeyeView’s feed pulled up from street level into a dimming sky. It sailed over Central Park, the steaming piles of e-waste like a volcanic badland. Even the most embattled enemies have always had business relationships.

Yes. You buy our junk, said Toran. Marshall cut him off with a curt nod.

SkeyeView skimmed the high-rises travelling south towards the Brooklyn Tunnel, just off Battery Park. Surveillance spotlights flooded the entrance as dusk settled over the city and rows of cars streamed onto the island, halting at a soldiers’ checkpoint.

A young, affluent crowd dressed for the night was being inspected, their wrists outfitted with electronic bracelets that flickered in the dark. Actias watched them on the holoscreen. "Even many of your privileged youth seem