The Reality Incursion Page 3

  He dropped into the chair beside the closet door. “I’m sure it will pass.” He waved his hand, dismissing the guest’s extended hand. “No, that’s okay. I’ll be fine. Thank you for your concern.”

  Trillian turned back to the closet door.

  The buzzing noise in Timothy’s head grew. Unseen swarms circled him, and the room swam in and out of focus. He squeezed his eyes shut in an effort to regain his equilibrium. The soft creak of the closet door pierced the droning buzz, and a wave of hot air washed over him. The dense, complex odors of a large, industrial city assaulted the confused Footman.

  Fighting a nauseating dizziness, Timothy opened his eyes and pushed to his feet. He steadied his balance with a hand to the wall and looked into the closet.

  The dark, confined space he expected to see was not there. Instead of a few tidy shelves of cleaning supplies, two brooms, and a dustpan, the closet opened onto a city, the likes of which Timothy could not have imagined.

  Impossibly tall buildings lined a broad, busy street filled with more people than he had ever seen at one time.

  The people were dressed oddly. Some men wore business suits, identifiable as such despite their strange cut and the absence of proper headwear. And the women! Timothy was shocked by their immodest garb. Why, he could see the bare knees and thighs of those who wore dresses or short skirts! The majority of people sported embarrassingly inappropriate casual attire. Men and women clad in skin-tight blue pants. Trades people, perhaps? Had they not been situated in the middle of a bustling city, he would have thought them farmers.

  While the vestments were odd, the automobiles absolutely astonished him. He had never seen such sleek machinery, not in all his days. And there were so many of them. The collective noise that emanated as drivers impatiently roared engines and honked horns was an affront to the senses. Even worse, the language the drivers shouted at any pedestrian or vehicle that dared impede their progress was an insult to his sensibilities.

  Timothy didn’t recognize Mr. Trillian right away; the guest’s clothing had changed to match the style of the better-accoutered businessmen on the sidewalk around him. But that was definitely him. He stood well into the impossibly expanded closet, blending into that magnificent and frightful city. While Timothy tried to make sense of the scene, Mr. Trillian stretched out his arms, laughed, and twirled around, taking in his new surroundings.

  Timothy stood on wobbly legs in the open doorframe and watched him, too flabbergasted to move.

  Shard Trillian glanced back over his shoulder and noticed the stunned Footman standing at the door. He dropped his arms, amused by the anomaly. From the city side in which the Shard stood, the doorway opened into an opulently-furnished dining room from another era. Few of the frenetic passersby spared a second glance at the formally-dressed servant frozen in the open portal. After all, this was New York.

  The Shard made a sweeping motion with one hand. “Would you mind closing that, please?” he requested, pointing to the door.

  It was clear he expected programmed obedience from the servant. He turned without a second glance and set off down the sidewalk, disappearing into an ocean of bobbing heads.

  Timothy teetered indecisively. A gasp from the dining room reminded him where he was.

  Lady Chattingbaron paused at the main entrance, a hand delicately covering her gaping mouth. Behind her, Timothy glimpsed a hovering matte-black, spherical Securitor. She hadn’t sensed it yet; her full attention was locked on the impossible scene in the closet.

  “Timothy…,” she began. The Securitor projected a greenish beam that encapsulated and silenced her. The menacing sphere pushed past her paralyzed virtual-body and floated into the room.

  Timothy bolted over the closet threshold and into the strange world, slamming the door shut behind him.

  The new city was much bigger than the London he knew, in fact, bigger than any city he knew. Maybe he could hide from the Securitors here. He ran down the sidewalk in the opposite direction from Mr. Trillian, bouncing off irritated virtual New Yorkers of 2040. A stream of profanity, fluttering pages, and angry gestures followed the Footman’s clumsy flight.

  Back in Casa DonTon’s family dining room, the Securitor ripped the closet door from its hinges. Inside, it found a few shelves, two brooms, a dustpan, and some polishing cloths. The city was gone.

  Anomaly has escaped—the Securitor reported. Its smooth voice was devoid of anger and frustration. It scanned the virtual room for any trace of Timothy. Finding none, it left.

  3

  Greg and Kathy struggled to manage the effect Darian’s data deluge had on their lattices through the rest of Sunday and into the early hours of Monday morning. They fought to maintain a modicum of sanity against foreign memories, thoughts, and stray associations.

  The walk from the lab back to Darian’s apartment had been fruitless; there was no sign he’d passed by. They’d convinced his building manager to check his suite in case he was inside, lying unconscious and in need of help. It was eerily quiet but nothing looked out of place; there was no sign of a struggle or that he’d left for a trip. The local hospitals had no record of recent admissions resembling Darian or Larry, for that matter. It was as if the two had disappeared from the face of the earth, along with the RAF generator.

  Working offline felt slow and clumsy, but it was a necessary precaution. Darian’s data stream was waiting for their lattices to reopen. It was lurking in networked computers of cars, phones, appliances, lab equipment, anything connected to the internet of things.

  They had enough to deal with already. Their brains didn’t know what to do with all the little bits of Darian that had leaked in during the initial barrage—flashes of everything he ever knew, experienced, or thought. They could barely distinguish their own memories, ideas, and feelings from his.

  They heard the voices of his parents, teachers, and former associates playing out old conversations and arguments, and delivering wisdom as if they’d been there at the time. Fragments of books and articles pertaining to fields they’d never worked in settled uneasily into their own memories: virus engineering, dendy semiconductor design, lattice theory. They remembered people they’d never met and places they’d never been, all in one crazy, confused jumble.

  The couple floundered and strained to make sense of the foreign thoughts, to tie details to what they knew, and to preserve themselves within the chaos.

  When they cautiously reconnected their lattices with the external world, a fresh inundation of thoughts and memories poured in, and raced to reconnect with the excised fragments cluttering their lattices.

  They staggered into work around 7:30 Monday morning. They wandered back and forth between the office and the lab, hoping their coworkers would miraculously appear with the RAF generator. C’mon, guys, where are you? Let’s all have a good laugh over this craziness, and get on with our work—Greg silently pleaded.

  By 8:15 a.m., they accepted that neither Darian nor Larry was going to show up, and that nobody was trying to reach them to make demands or shed light on the situation. It was time to make an official report.

  They arrived at Dr. Wong’s office, and asked if he might know where Darian was, or Larry. He didn’t.

  Greg relayed the little information they had. “I know it sounds thin but it’s been twenty-four hours now, and we’d like to make an official report. We came to you first because we were afraid the police wouldn’t take us seriously. To be honest, if it had been only Larry, we’d probably give it another day, maybe even two. We came to you because you know Darian. You know what a workaholic he is; the man practically lives in the lab. And you know how important his work is to him. He was so excited when he called us about a new development.”

  “Greg’s right, this isn’t like Darian at all,” Kathy added. “He would’ve been there in the lab waiting for us. Something is wrong. What if that psycho shooter at the Philosopher’s Cafe wasn’t acting alone after all? Darian could be in real trouble.”

  Dr.
Wong read the worry on the two scientists’ faces. He dialed Campus Security and identified himself. “We’re concerned we have a missing faculty member; possibly one of his associates, as well, and some missing lab equipment with sensitive material on it. It’s probably nothing, but we’d really appreciate it if you could check it out for us.”

  The officer took down the names and lab information, gave the Chair a file reference number, and promised to send someone right over to get the full information. “Can you meet us at Dr. Leigh’s lab?”

  When Dr. Wong, Kathy, and Greg arrived at the lab, two officers were waiting for them. They entered together. Kathy and Greg repeated what they knew, and the officers looked around. Without much to tell, the visit was short. “Give us a few hours to see what we can find out,” the lead officer said, and closed his tablet. “We’ll contact you with any updates. It would be helpful if someone could stay at the lab today in case one of them arrives.”

  “Yes, of course,” Kathy replied. The lead officer was on his phone with the Human Resources liaison before he crossed the threshold, and the pair disappeared down the hallway.

  Dr. Wong glanced at his cell phone. “Okay, I’ve got a meeting across campus in about...five minutes ago. I have to run, but keep me informed. I’ll leave my cell on, and I’ll call you if there are any updates. Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll turn up, and we’ll all feel silly about this by noon.”

  Kathy and Greg went through the motions of work for the next few hours. When the lab phone rang at 11:00, they raced to pick it up, but it was only Dr. Wong, checking in. “Campus Security visited Darian’s suite and spoke with the manager. No leads there.”

  We already knew that—Greg thought, but held his tongue.

  “And Kenna, our Human Resources liaison, managed to reach both Larry’s mom and Darian’s aunt, neither of whom knew anything about the young scientists’ whereabouts, but are now equally concerned.”

  “Thanks for the update, Dr. Wong. Nothing new here,” Greg replied.

  At noon, he and Kathy locked up and went to the cafeteria for lunch or, more accurately, to kill time and silently pick at their Cobb salads. They pitched the unfinished salads after ten minutes and headed back to the lab.

  “This waiting around is driving me crazy. There’s little or no help we can offer the police,” he said. “But we can carry on the work. We can do that much for Darian.”

  Kathy looked at her partner. She felt his frustration. He’s right. We have to do something. “I can build a new RAF generator within the month,” Kathy suggested, as if it were a perfectly normal response, on a perfectly normal day. “That will give us a chance to independently test the theory. In the meantime, maybe we can find a gentler way to accept the rest of Darian’s download. Maybe there’s something in there.”

  Greg picked up on her hopeful tone. “Yeah, our lattices can keep working in the background on the first bit of data he sent us. They can organize and integrate it and, hopefully, find a way to partition it from our own minds. Then we can start pulling in the rest of his data dump and locate his most recent memories. Maybe we’ll even be able to see what he did to get the RAF working.”

  “Yeah.” Kathy’s face grew somber. “Maybe we’ll learn what it was he figured out before he disappeared.”

  4

  Brother Stralasi and Darak toured the remaining ten Realm colonies in galaxy NGC4567 in five days. From there, they jumped to M87 in the heart of the Virgo cluster, visited a hundred of the major colonies, and headed out on the long journey toward the Origin galaxy, affectionately known throughout the Realm as the Milky Way.

  Four months and over a hundred planets after leaving Gargus, Darak and the Good Brother arrived on Rafael 263.3, the twelfth colony Darak wanted to visit within the galaxy the ancient index identified as NGC4450. They were a little over fourteen million light years from Home World.

  Their tour of colonized planetary systems in the Virgo Cluster illustrated the homogenizing effect of Alum’s Realm. Though the worlds were at considerably different stages of development—as would be expected given the millions of years separating oldest from newest—they shared many common characteristics.

  Everywhere the pair travelled, people worked, played, and prayed the same way. Cities and towns grew. People tended farms and planetary ecologies. They courted, married, and raised children. They attended to Alum’s works and they were happy.

  Brother Stralasi’s view of the established worlds changed dramatically during their travels. It had come as quite a shock to the otherwise broadly educated and well-informed monk that it wasn’t Alum who directly blessed the worlds with His riches. The prayers people sent to Alum from the Alumitas and Foundation buildings throughout the Realm were secretly rerouted to local Cybrids. The Cybrids stationed in support asteroids genetically engineered practically everything grown for the People, and whatever wasn’t grown, was built and repaired by other Cybrids. While Alum directed activity in His Realm, the Cybrids carried out the work.

  Every trip he and Darak took to a new planetary system included a visit to the local Integration Lab and, every time, Darak would send him off to enjoy the peaceful gardens, while he stayed back to discuss some secret project with the Cybrid scientists.

  Stralasi inquired, casually at first, what his business might be with the Cybrids. Every time, Darak artfully deflected his questions.

  After several similar instances, and an equal number of redirects, curiosity got the better of the monk and he asked more pointedly.

  Darak still refused to discuss what he was doing with the Cybrids. “After all,” he said, “if even they don’t know why they’re doing what I ask, why should I put you at risk?”

  “With all due respect, I humbly submit that my exposure to risk has been so extreme to this point, surely I could bear such a small additional burden of deeper knowledge,” Stralasi challenged. “You praise knowledge as the best way to combat the People’s ‘unreasonable’ devotion to Alum. How is this any different?”

  Darak harrumphed. “You have been listening, then.” No further explanation was forthcoming.

  As the two arrived at the third planet in under forty-eight hours, a bedazzled and exhausted Stralasi could not resist remarking to Darak how everywhere in Alum’s Realm felt like home.

  “Praise be to Yov for creating such a wondrous universe,” the monk exclaimed, “and to Alum for blessing it with so many perfect worlds for His People.”

  “Goodness. You have no inkling of the real nature of the Realm, do you?” Darak replied. “Would you like me to show you what these worlds are truly like?”

  “What do you mean? I was with you. I saw them for myself.”

  “What you saw was a version of each world filtered through your lattice, which I synchronized according to local starstep parameters.”

  Stralasi stared blankly at him.

  “Listen, even an amateur astronomer would appreciate that habitable worlds vary over a wide range of parameters: different gravity, atmosphere, light spectrum, diurnal period, seasons, length of year, and so on. It’s much easier to change the inhabitants’ perceptions of the planets than it is to alter the planets to fit one Standard physiology.”

  “If you say so,” Stralasi uttered. He gave his imagination free reign to work out the implications, but he couldn’t bring himself to voice the questions that resulted.

  Darak gave the monk a friendly nudge. “Did you think humans were not included in the work done at the Integration Labs?”

  Modification of the People themselves? Stralasi had never imagined such an idea. Altering a person’s essence—their DNA, he reminded himself—was bizarre, potentially catastrophic, and likely immoral.

  “If the People are genetically modified to suit the different worlds, why do we all look and feel more or less the same everywhere we go?” he challenged.

  Darak waited patiently for Stralasi to arrive at the answer on his own. Insight struck the Brother’s brain like an electric shock: “Our
lattices!” he exclaimed.

  Darak nodded. “Yes, your lattices. In the same way they are used to deliver information or entertainment directly into your senses, they can be altered to make you accept what you perceive or remember as perfectly normal. The true perceptual experience doesn’t have to be overridden, only your cognitive or emotional response to the experience. When you recall your visit to a different planet, the details of that memory are filtered through your belief of what it must have been like. Everything is adjusted to expectations by your lattice.”

  “I want to know the reality,” Stralasi demanded.

  Darak lifted his hand, palm upward, in a motion symbolic of lifting the veil of deceit over Stralasi’s memories. Recollections of impossible places flooded the Brother’s mind. Visions of monsters only marginally recognizable as humans were overlaid with images of how he had perceived them through his lattice filter.

  On some planets, people were short and powerful with thick bones and strong muscles, an indication of heavier than normal gravity. On other worlds, the inhabitants were delicate creatures, tall and lithesome. Some planets suffered with extreme cold and their people were characterized by fur coats, short noses, and tiny, flat ears. Other worlds were so hot that inhabitants sprouted enormous cooling fins in the middle of their backs. On water-covered worlds, the inhabitants had both flippers and gills. The images that remained in Stralasi’s memory, from all these strange worlds, were of green lands and people who looked like him.

  “Wait a second,” the monk sensed something important tickling at the edge of consciousness. This trip had given him a lot to process. To learn that his world, his thoughts and his perceptions had been so far wrong, so untrustworthy, all of his life was stupefying. The niggling realization wormed its way to the surface of his thoughts and snapped into focus. “If the worlds we visited were all so inhospitable to my basic form, how could I have survived?”