Chapter 21


Tina had experienced far worse problems that had lasted longer. "Yes, Anonymous and the Method appear to be one and the same person, whom you've been asked not to approach."
  "She could be in the next car for all I know."
  "Do the opposite of what you usually do." Donitz's favorite apothegm was infuriatingly vague.
  "I can't believe she's still alive."
  "Millipol shared clues with our Group commanders for the past fifteen years."
  "I must have missed that memo."
  "Less than a thousand people were told. She may have been using Multiverse to test human behavior. It would fit her profile."
  Rick was glad he was sitting down. He heard an echo in his voice. "Her only signature is that she doesn't have one."
  "Article One applies. The Federal Police will lead the search, regulate air and surface traffic, and suspend civil rights as needed. When they discover her location, all movement in the affected area will stop, and they call in the Army special negotiator. Anonymous will do a lot more damage before she's done."
  "We're twice as smart now."
  "And as vulnerable. Agent Kogu of the Wuhan office is in charge. They're pulling Secretary General Wahimatopouli out of the rainforest to declare a World Emergency."
  Rick basked in the light from the guardrail, the ride as smooth as a desk.
  She continued calmly. "The raid on the Church of Ultimate Truth was a fiasco. The Master's gone into a trance, and his acolytes are speaking in tongues."
  "I told you to leave them alone."
  "Not my decision. Stay in touch with Chen, and you might yet live through this mess. You're authorized to share what we know."
  "I'll need new codes."
  "I'll get your old ones back. Until then, you're a Millipol special investigator, COORD Group, with a voice scrambler. Donitz says it's safer if you don't leave your car."
  "I'm not on a safari."
  Five minutes later, Millipol released its Anonymous files, ten thousand pages going back a decade. A significant portion of history. If eighty billion years of combined human thought hadn't been able to find a solution, why did he think he could do it alone?

  The year 2029 had been an immense, extended adventure, in which almost half a million civilians had died. Not really a person but a concept, Anonymous had replaced a long list of older names as the symbol of evil. Like a creature of the deep: quiet, frightful, and very hungry; but not necessarily immortal. Almost nothing was known about the smartest human ever, including whether she really existed. She might have started as a game character, a university art project, or a blended identity. Both known photos were taken from high altitude. She was said to be a billionaire heiress or a Romanian orphan. The WHO's current best guess was a "polar body chimera". Alternatively, she might be her own anti-twin, combining all genes of both parents, a recombinant bi-clone. Genetic anomalies were becoming more common. Because of uncertain paternity, more than 100.000 people worldwide had unknowingly married a half sibling. DNA-tests were sold in gumball machines.
  She had never been declared dead. DNA was extracted from a charred jawbone, which could have been faked. Either way, she probably had plastic surgery.
  Rick was irritated by all the conflicting claims, believing none. He thought Anonymous was a real person, who had cooperated with others to form a stable illusion. The group had erased all evidence of the immense preparation her stunts required.
  According to the new files, her posthumous career began ten years ago. She was spotted behind a group of dancers in a meadow, in a healthcare infomercial titled "your money or your life", which won a Wellness Award. Her face looked frightening in close up.
  Money was a form of intelligence. The trail led to North California, where Project 17 by MindScynces Labs in Eureka had studied the sociology of a closed community. After eliminating the study director, Anonymous had used his knowledge to find other original minds on the Net. A hierarchy of gamers, hackers, AI designers, and a math genius had exchanged info through DEEFx. Many groups were impenetrable, but this one was also undetectable.
  Next she had probably performed a Method field trial. Finding it was Chen's new obsession. Anonymous would sense the approaching investigation, and might decide to meet it halfway.
  The highway passed a long building draped across a hill like a ribbon. Lights were coming on inside as people prepared for the new day, still mostly ignoring the news.
  "She probably won't exist by this time tomorrow," Tina said in a calm interval. "She may release all her data in retaliation. The Back Room and the I-Group will try to contaminate it."
  For Chen, Judgment Day had arrived, but he still sounded rational. "We've offered her a new identity in the church," he said. "By removing all other options, we create the True Path."
  "I wonder if my life was planned by a higher force," Rick lied.
  "At the moment we are the higher force."
  Chen explained his plan. Some parts might even be true. At five locations in the Chinese road network, church members were standing by in large recreational vehicles, with hidden compartments in the waste tank. An island resort in the Philippines was sending all its guests home, and Chen had summoned a plastic surgeon who pioneered in skin cloning. Anonymous only had to say yes, and she would be allowed to guide the evolution of a world religion. His proposal was written in very formal language. She had the implied legitimacy of a country or a demon.
  Rick would oversee the project, using her skills to help make the world safer. He wouldn't be surprised if Donitz went along with the proposal. Chen knew there was little chance the UN Executive Council would allow it - if they ever found out. Rick would worry about Chen's backup plans later.
  "If she won't work for us, we'll help the authorities catch her," Chen said. "We must appease them."
  "Do you want revenge?"
  "We don't use that word. She can never be free again. Her only redemption is with us."
  Great forces were spiraling closer. Rick thought out loud: "Anonymous thrives on change. Look in areas that will soon become fashionable." There were lists for everything. Five decades of Net genealogy, and a million unsolved murders worldwide.
  He passed a convoy of Korean trucks in the dawn. On both sides, the highway overlooked a labyrinth of short streets. Cresting a hill, he faced a shining sea. No, solar panels. Every roof had a photovoltaic sheen. At certain angles they reflected the light.

  The first real clue came from Shijiazhuang prefecture, and a small economic zone to the north.
  "Anonymous manipulated groups of any size," Tina said, "from the UN down to individual thoughts. To avoid detection, she experimented on the smallest stable clusters, which in China are "favor networks", or bribery chains. We've processed 10% of the leaked personality tests, and Chen's data helped resolve a contradiction. Basically, the Back Room looked for individuals who changed too much. They found sixteen candidates so far." Some of them had felt her touch.
  "All outsiders?"
  "Not anymore. Their stories are too inspiring, and too similar. In the past five years, at least a dozen ex-convicts have managed to reform themselves into model citizens, who no longer tolerate rule-breaking of any kind. Their personalities have changed completely." Tina spoke leisurely without pausing. "They're the tip of the iceberg. We think they were part of a field trial designed to avoid detection. If so, the Method may be fully operational."
  "I'll risk telling Chen."
  Citizen records flashed on Rick's screen. The ex-criminals lived in different towns. Many people had taken credit for their improvement.
  "That narrows it down. I can reach the first region in . . . six hours," he said optimistically. The road moved faster. It would not feel real until he saw her door, still a shadow in his mind's eye.

  Today's battle had been a quarter century in the making. It all began with a video from mankind's collective imagination. One of the last broadcast commercials had opened with a jogger rising out of a misty sunrise. He (or she) ran through a succession of stylish streets with remarkable architecture, bright non-repeating shapes, the world as a theme park. In the signature shot, the runner crossed a dividing line between neighborhoods. It ended with a new symbol.
  A communist professor at an online university had started a propaganda campaign to encourage a new world order. He wanted to combine every existing movement, to save humanity from itself. There wasn't much time: three deliberate epidemics had already devastated a dozen regions in Africa and Asia. It was possible to contain bio-terrorism with roadblocks and radical decontamination, but whole villages had been sacrificed. Eventually, there would be a tragedy unlike anything anyone could imagine.
  The revolution began in the Third World, where a billion people were effectively worthless, or had so much debt they worked less than they could. The movement was called Floating Mountain, and followed the principles of "Evrolution": no organization could be abolished, only made less powerful. Leadership functions were widely distributed. Unlike classic communism, it might work in theory.
  The focus was local, with groundwork laid by women's groups and students, and passive support from the poor. Each cell appeared harmless by itself, promoting one small legal or economic change, followed by education campaigns, site-specific posters, synchronized protests and disruptions. For a traditionally poor culture to develop, it first had to get worse.
  In a slow landslide, the fifty poorest countries became communist democracies. Japan, Israel, Germany and six other rich countries joined the alliance. Brazil was replaced by an alphabet soup of organizations. China and Russia refused to get involved, North America was otherwise distracted, and India wasn't sure if it took part. Africa became newly energized.
  Reformed communism had emerged as a web of overlapping corporations, which only controlled public resources (shared by more than three people or one family). Immense mining and manufacturing chains formed a common market. Public housing sprang up with bewildering variety. Bureaucrats tried to replace money with influence.
  The laws were different for everyone, but always predictable. The member states mostly avoided tyranny, and even reduced tensions with their neighbors. The leaders used self parody to seem less intimidating.
  Rick had been in his early twenties when he had joined the UN Inspector Corps, but was already very advanced, morally speaking. He showed up a day early for the Batch-2 selection process in a Midwestern suburb. Nowadays, agents were self-appointed by automated tests. Back then the selection committee had been more open-minded, since no one knew what worked yet. He had walked in, slammed his hands on the table, and said humanity was doomed. Basically, this was a crap planet. Throughout history, mankind hadn't even managed an annual average increase in living standards.
  The committee asked him to perform a roleplay, and watched closely. They learned both his parents had been killed while taking avoidable risks, running projects for disadvantaged individuals. Rick had sustained a head injury himself, and lost part of his past.
  He had been hired as a candidate agent that evening, and regretted his candor by the end of the first training day. Half his class had quit when they realized they were part of an experiment. That was the only part he liked.
  The standard communist error was to prepare for every contingency. He remembered UNCID director Harling talking on a stage in front of an enlarged photo of a metal cylinder. His T-shirt read "Now what?". Even from the back of the room, Rick could see the cylinder was a mock-up, but only the intention mattered. The Holocide Bomb would release more energy than all others combined, even if they didn't really plan to build it.
  UN resolve could be ephemeral, but this time the ultimatum was sincere: the communists could remain in power, but they weren't allowed to form military alliances, or coordinate their defense policy.
  The Comms would eventually have agreed to these terms, but they couldn't formulate a reply in time. They cared too much about the details. The deadlines came and went like so many before them.
  The first shots were silent. World War Three was mostly fought at night, starting with the Battle of the Satellites. A fleet of cheap rockets launched hundreds of Indian-designed micro-sats, each carrying a gun and an infrared aiming camera. There were blinding flashes, as orbital debris spread like snow. Ground-based lasers destroyed nav and com satellites. So far, no one had been killed.
  It did not feel like a war to those who gave the orders. What remained of the North American Navy captured three quarters of the Earth's surface on the first day, though NA remained neutral for another week. The air war was fought all at once, with thousands of drones and the last manned fighters shot down in a few hours. Before the first land battle in the Hindu Kush (fought without anesthetics as usual), the strategic balance was unknown. The war might be lost at any moment, or turn into the ultimate stalemate. It still felt oddly civilized. All combatants used sophisticated game theory and non-linear simulations.
  Communist societies proved unexpectedly vulnerable. Their armies were not programmed to take the initiative. Software attacks crippled supply chains, while precision bombs disabled utilities and killed selected individuals from extreme altitude. The newest weapons emerging from the decentralized factories would make it child's play to kill everyone else. Humans were ridiculously weak. This really would be the last war, at least between countries.
  According to three sources, Anonymous was the 43 year old owner of the little known .kom domain. Her doctorate was in search engines, and her data processing skills were beyond legendary. Intensely focused but always changing, she edited her own memories. Anonymous organized groups, made them compete, and taught them how to profit from setbacks. She helped her enemies evolve in order to defeat them faster. Her private firm could be reached through a chain of intermediaries, none of whom were sure she really existed. Communist agents had needed three weeks to make contact.
  The counterattack began when Switzerland collapsed for the first time since Napoleon. Anonymous somehow coordinated the actions of fifty countries with a few paragraphs of text per day. A fifth column of communist sympathizers had already been recruited online. A small percentage of them could reliably follow orders. Their training software was disguised as games, and their weapons fit inside briefcases and pockets. They were responsible for disruption, persuasion and propaganda.
  Their strangest job had been to arm and refuel a fleet of tiny drones circling the globe at night, an invisible air force serviced by automated bases on rooftops and even in trees. Using organic fuel cells, they delivered shaped charges to selected weak spots, hundreds converging at once. Properly distributed, it would take only a few tons of high explosives to collapse civilization. Fifty thousand additional drones could have caused a ceasefire.
  A natural gas tanker explosion was heard by twenty million people, so bright it stopped a rainstorm. The second blast was even worse. From the wrong angle, downtown Houston had looked like tombstones in a burning cemetery, though only six hundred people had died. The smoke trail reached the Atlantic.
  The Battle of the Net had lasted three days. A small amount of data was slightly altered, and bank accounts suddenly became fictional, phones didn't sound, and Net users felt homeless. The world became unhinged.
  Anonymous had anticipated every reaction, steadily increasing the tension: misinformation, false beacons, new drugs, psychotic crowds, invisible wires. It was the first political war, with nine premiers and three presidents assassinated or incapacitated, and three more forced to resign. The world couldn't handle this much news. People slept waiting for the sound from their screens to change. The strain alone had caused a trillion dollars in damage.
  Strange effects reached every point of the globe. In North America, the executive branch became a direct democracy, and every citizen could vote on military policy. Many areas saw brief but intense commando raids. The first primitive robot battles had erased medium-sized squares of the surface.
  The Japanese communist headquarters were destroyed in the war's only nuclear explosion. While it was never proven that China had done it, it did become clear everyone else hadn't done it. Anonymous might have provoked the attack to encourage a settlement. Most people couldn't believe what had happened; Rick couldn't believe what was going to happen. He waited with almost spiritual detachment.
  The next day, swarms of floating spheres had appeared in the skies. They ranged in size from dots to small mountains, and came in all colors, though most were transparent. Some of the smaller balloons had floated for years, hanging over suburban lawns and between skyscrapers, changing altitude at a whim, seemingly endowed with minimal intelligence. They released streams of airborne prions.
  The smallest and toughest disease vectors, associated with cannibalism and insanity, prions were resistant to fire and radiation, and could convert the victim's body into more prions. Pharmaceutical versions were used in mind-altering pills, and to disable certain harmful genes, but these had a far deadlier shape. Most of the computers in the Third World had helped design them.
  The prions acted with radical speed, sometimes killing their victims in mid-sentence. Only a fraction of the population was vulnerable to them, but knowing this fact seemed to increase the risk. Less than one gram had been absorbed by humanity during the war, killing about 500, but now there could be no peace until one side had been defeated. Homes were traded for car keys, tent cities stretched along highways, and ordinary people became sudden killers. Anonymous had achieved a stalemate. Commentators claimed to have expected it all along.
  Rick remembered running obstacle courses and sitting through long briefings on involuntary inspections while waiting for his call-up. He had been scheduled to visit Brazil as a passenger of Eurofor, where they needed his powers of observation. Until now, his life had been boring. He tried to prepare for the ultimate boredom.

  Above all, the communists had been rational. When their analysis showed they couldn't win, the war had ended instantly. Missiles were disabled in mid-flight. Two days later, it was as if it had never happened.
  In the postwar peace conference, almost everyone got amnesty. The communist programs could continue, and most were even expanded, but they had lost their monopoly status, while the UN increased in influence. Most countries were effectively abolished, as geography became obsolete.
  A final attempt had been made to capture Anonymous, combining all available data with a wild surmise. A large part of a jungle went up in flames in a terrible friendly-fire incident. Forensic experts had studied the ashes while smoke still stained the sky. As long as she was somewhere, the world remained a dangerous place. Rick had completely forgotten about the billion dollar reward for her capture.