Chapter 19


Rick opened his eyes to a funeral pyre sunset. These are the clouds about the fallen Sun.
  He realized it was past midnight, and that had to be Harbin, seen from the high-speed Songhua expressway (B5), heading southwest through Manchuria. A new city every ten minutes. He was cruising in approximately the right direction, 150 kph on automatic, a constant distance from the truck lights ahead. Both vehicles seemed welded to the road, which wasn't moving itself. Another car slid past with slow dignity, a wedge on a tabletop. Half the vehicles were windowless or unoccupied. The asphalt blurred like rain in an oval of light. The highway was elevated on pillars over dark farmland filled with prefabs.
  Strange to be driving instead of flying. Locked in place, he felt a false calm. Flying by vertol, he could sometimes see his destination the moment he left the ground.
  His phone emitted its second most urgent beep. "You died five minutes ago," Tina said sourly.
  "I probably deserved it," Rick said. "Is there anything I should do?" This road led to any point in three continents. "I hate Mondays."
  "It's a terrorist incident. Our new enemy is Cat-6. You're sponsored by Red Caucus until the crisis ends."

  Chen had left his mercenaries at the border. For a while, he had thought the target was in Russia. Flying down the coastline by luxury charter, he phoned a Triad acquaintance in Shenzou. Chinese disorganized crime was the inevitable result of too many laws. Despite heroic efforts, democracy had become popular. The autonomous regions and provinces all had different labyrinthine bureaucracies and unwritten rules. The Triads dealt in shortcuts: banned substances, tax evasion, alternative currencies, debt collection and worse. Chen had expected dragon tattoos and speedboats with machine guns, but they acted exactly like a normal business, he just didn't know their location.
  In one hour, he hired a busload of private investigators, former and current soldiers, unlicensed specialists, and a lawyer. He waited in an empty hangar while they deployed through the country's vast public transport network. Chen suspected the Method lived in eastern China.
  Before crossing the border, Rick had called the semi-private Federal Police Agency. Mustaphar had already asked them not to harass Chen. China was an alliance of regions, city states, and areas integrated with neighboring countries. The new center of the world economy, which had tripled in size this century. Not counting WMDs, China from 2025 could have defeated the USA from 2000. Rick had explained his plan over the phone.
  "None of our safe houses are available," the corporal said after seeming to consider it.
  Ten kilometers into the hills of Heilongjiang Province, Tina had an idea that seemed appropriate at the time.

  The theme park had opened in 1979 as Shangriland, and had evolved into a city-sized entertainment complex called Multiverse. Inside, nothing was predictable. It only took fifteen seconds to reboot someone's reality.
  The park's theme was parallel universes. Visitors saw different versions of Earth, and imagined all their other selves. The ghosts of people who didn't exist, impossible buildings that looked familiar. Diverging languages sounded like speech impediments. Subterranean civilizations projected their mirror image maps from below. Nuclear wars, philosophy without technology, all-dominant cultures seemingly ruled by magic, represented only a fraction of all imaginable realities. Most were even stranger. The most extreme would have driven visitors insane.
  Multiverse also owned the world's most respected roller-coaster, able to cause fear from twenty kilometers away. Guests used simulators that would have killed a medieval peasant, taking one-minute tours of the world or of their own memories.
  More things were possible in China, where everything was being replaced, and the losers often got disgruntled. Years of selective abortions, and the tensions caused by the subsequent boy explosion, meant homosexuality was encouraged by the government, or so the once ironic billboards said.
  Multiverse exploited the general public anxiety in Section-7, a restricted area known for mysterious ads. Visitors could hover in roaring updrafts of air or float in sensory deprivation tanks, both respectable activities. Those willing to pay extra could be immersed in an oxygenated fluid, and spun in a cylinder at many times the force of gravity. Animals could withstand over 1000 G, but humans usually tensed up at 100 G. The pressure burst at ten tons of weight, and then the visions started. New drugs could cause false memories. There was also a bordello, but every client had to be certified in advance by their local health department. Many disappointed visitors had been turned away.
  They could gamble instead: sometimes, game theory encouraged extreme risks. In Multiverse the top prize was immortality: in a few years (more like twenty, critics said), the winner's brain would be methodically dissolved by an acid scanner, and its atoms converted into eternal data. This would happen about a decade before it became commonplace. It would take another ten years to convert the data into software. The fear of death had never ruined as many lives as now.
  No reliable reports existed about the White Room. Stimulating the brain's pleasure centers was better than anyone could imagine, but remained highly illegal.
  The park had spent a fortune hiding the evidence. Barter was rare in an age of efficient markets, but they owed many favors to many groups. Tina only had to explain it once.
  The procedure provided alibis for their pleasure-seeking guests. A dozen engineers were detached to Multiverse's legendary basement, where they borrowed several hundred kilos of animatronics. A lifelike object was posed in a cheap room at the "Ua" resort. From a distance, the resemblance to Rick was uncanny, but it moved more gracefully. Rick routed his calls through that room, visible from a hilltop road. He could now appear anywhere he wanted without warning.
  Their plan had worked too well. "There's nothing left of your room," Tina said. "It was hit by an Eraser shell at 02:04."
  "What kind?" His voice trembled as he read furiously. Every ten meters the tires bumped a lane change marker. An Eraser launched a hypersonic wave of abrasive dust, forming a fuel-air explosive, causing spontaneous combustion.
  "30 mm gradient rings, closed cycle, self-limiting. The windows of the next room were only cracked, but the focused shockwave vaporized small objects inside."
  "That explains why there's no body." His first encounter with the enemy felt like a mistake.
  Tina called twice in the next half hour. The news mentioned disturbances in the park. A traffic jam kept journalists and other helpers away. "The assassin rappelled down a slope wearing a 'Cosmo Clown' mask. Multiverse security couldn't reach him, but InStaGrid blocked the exits. Can you see the video?"
  "Clearly." There were transponders in the guardrail. A figure jumped over a fence, seen from different angles.
  "Other guests helped him escape," Tina continued. "At 02:05 a passenger sabotaged the Black Cloud roller coaster."
  "How did they time the lines?" Rick remembered waiting for hours, a metaphor for life.
  "No one waits anymore, they make appointments for rides. That helped security stop another attack. The Black Cloud passenger disabled his restraining harness, and pretended to commit suicide by standing up in the catapult. The ride halted, he ran to a manual control box, and pressed all the buttons."
  Rick saw footage of the indoor coaster. A typical drab teenager ducked under the tracks as a cart roared overhead. The place seemed to be on fire.
  "The same thing happened at the 'Oyo' ride. The passengers were sure they would die." They were still hanging at the end of a cable. "The provincial Security Bureau blames adolescent gang members who can't get jobs."
  "This may actually help their resumes." He had no idea if it was true. Teenagers competed to define normal behavior, though he never had.
  "They stopped six rides, screwing up the schedule. Guests began heading for the exits, and the attacker slipped through a gap. Something happened in Section-7. Stand by."
  She called back seconds later. In the interval, he read a political group had taken over Multiverse, and the park was being evacuated.
  "The youths were hired last week to test safety features," she said. "They followed orders from a blackmailed supervisor, who lost control of his section."
  "A member of Ultimate Truth?"
  "No, he's too independent. Wears a toga, and likes to scare people with a small flame-thrower. We don't know who threatened him, but Multiverse's most exclusive attractions crashed under his command at 02:20. One customer was on the moon at the time."

  An efficiency expert who fired people for a living, Yasuo Takashi lived under permanent stress. His method was to cut slightly deeper than necessary, frightening those who needed it most. The remaining employees worked harder, and shared a portion of their former colleagues' salary. Knowing that other efficiency experts were always watching him was Yasuo's main concern.
  He could afford to escape this world for one day each month. His body was suspended in a gleaming framework, while 364.000 kilometers away a faceless robot copied his movements on the surface of the moon. It had cameras where its head should be, and a fur-like sensor layer.
  Alone with his imperceptibly lengthening shadow, Yasuo felt the hard sunlight, soft gravity, and scorching ashes of the Magritte escarpment at the edge of the Sea of Nectar. The land appeared to be lit by a lamp over his head, midnight at noon. He felt like a ten meter giant, floating over the horizon. Early moon robots had been 1/6 scale. The crisply baked and textured landscape was like a view through an electron microscope. Around him were myriad rocks ejected from craters, messier than Earth rocks. Some large boulders had rolled together like an altar. Gray-brown dunes in the middle distance formed the edge of an endless beach.
  There were natural tunnels nearby, long tubes once filled with lava. Some were big enough to fly through. Hundreds of lost smaller moons of Earth were memorialized in the lunar craters. The most recent one had fallen near the dawn of history. Long before then, a larger impact had flipped this world around, switching the side that faced Earth.
  Yasuo took a lazy step, splashing up dust. He craned his head up at the black sky. Nothing up there but lightyears. The ground two meters under his feet had been frozen for ages. Hydrogen ejected from the Sun bounced off the surface, or there would have been ice down there.
  Yasuo's earphone beeped twice, and a blue square cut a piece out of the horizon. His weight bounced back, as he switched to Earthside.
  He sensed danger and didn't move. A knight's armor in a snowglobe, his suit could keep him alive for weeks.
  The world was made of barriers, but now he saw a small hole in MultiverseGrid88. This would be his only chance. Without thinking, he followed the instructions and established an identity. He found an immense game, combining all existing ones. It even included him! Descriptions stacked up like insight. Mankind would be persuaded to follow a grand plan. They couldn't disobey. He saw further than ever before.
  His screams set off the alarms as his muscles locked. The medics had to saw through the harness framework, spilling its entrails on the gleaming floor.

  "No physical injuries," Tina reported.
  "There's no other kind."
  "He doesn't move or respond to stimuli. People have been killed by information before, scared to death or driven insane by rogue sims."
  "It's not an overdose?"
  "No, the famous three-second lunar time-delay. He used false memory to create a feedback link with the moon robot." Trading quantity for quality, speed for depth. "We live half a second in the past, but don't realize it. Yasuo forgot to switch it off. It interfered with whatever he found inside Multiverse."
  "What's happening at the park?"
  "Most visitors thought the disruptions were part of the entertainment, but some panicked. The attacker escaped through the tunnel network. Guards found a buoyancy vest and a rebreather in a drainage channel."
  Tina's screen went blank for one second. "Chen thought you were staying at Multiverse," she continued. "Perhaps he doesn't need you anymore."
  Rick felt guilty just sitting here. When in doubt, delay. "We don't know it's him. Let's not alarm the church."
  "That's up to the Vietnam authorities," Tina said. "I can't control them."
  "Sure you can."
  She checked her screens. "If Chen didn't attack you, the Method may have done it. In that case, we've already lost any information he could provide us."
  DEEFx's illegal truth algorithm was the highest form of cooperation. Player-0, the Foreigner, and at least one government had used it to trade Thunderstorm, and much else. Only the Method could control it.
  Tina signed off. Rick drank coffee and tried to think. He liked to play loud music in the dark, raw techno from the slums of Hanover. Funkenwagen. The notes of "I want everything" included instants of silence, a strain on ordinary loudspeakers. It was about a mundane subject, someone had lost his shoes. Not really driving music, unless he was trying to break the land speed record. Most new music came from games, and was generated by aggregate power laws, different every time. The programmers on the album cover looked like they didn't know how to hold their instruments, and were angry for that reason.
  Strings of lights draped the hills, the valleys glowing in patches. Northeast China was a web of narrow roads. Highways were up to four levels high. The dense eastern provinces were merging into one suburb.
  The night held no answers. He called Chen. "The Method just tried to kill me," he said. "I disconnected from the Net." He called it "not existing". "Don't reveal your location to anyone, including the Master."
  "You don't sound too good," Chen replied.
  Rick coughed. "Dust in my lungs. I'll recover if I live. I took a quantrilizer. The Method is attempting to find us before we can find him."
  "I hope that's true." Chen used a church technique to sharpen his attention, and immediately felt more relevant. "Explain what happened."
  Sounding slightly drunk, Rick summarized the park attacks. The media was showing live video, flashing emergency lights, and kilometers of stalled traffic. Strange buildings glowed under a heat shimmer. Commentators speculated without input. Rick didn't mention Chen was a suspect.
  "You're listed as killed in action," Chen said. "Without your UN codes, you must still be near the park."
  Tina had given him a new identity. "I'm at the Niuiuis theme resort. It's very quiet here. If I wanted to explore 300 kinds of sleep, I would have become a bureaucrat." Chen didn't recognize the joke. Rick felt like yawning. "Have you found the Method?"
  "Our meditation group can sense his presence," Chen said. "I also have material evidence. I need you to access UNDAT resources. It's important a church member make first contact."
  "Do you need help with the Chinese authorities?"
  "No, we're no threat to them. Our time has finally come. Sergey Rubech has just contacted the 'Foreigner'." Once his cover was blown, Chen had started using the full names of his conspirators.