Chapter 41


Rick woke in his generic hotel room to the echo of knocking. Dots faded before his eyes. Some places had horses in the walls.
  Once again, he had dreamt about the Others, all the versions of himself living their uncountable lives in parallel universes, an exponential crowd. He had almost reached a revelation, as if they could all link up. The best versions of himself had overcome the worst problems. He did not want to join them.
  He was proud of his imagination, an almost pregnant feeling. Clearly, he was overstimulated by the present case. He had to reconsider every step. Too many people had died.
  "Get up!" Tina shouted through the door. "Our flight leaves in five minutes."
  Text over his bed read: "THIS IS NOT A DREAM".
  He forgot what he had been thinking. Full of cool sunlight, the room seemed to tumble as he stood up. Soon, this morning would be a distant memory.
  He grunted something as he turned on the news. Anxiety had replaced excitement. Most people were blaming Anonymous for RedList. Endorsed by the UN, the Total Search had already triggered dozens of false alarms. The Council of Governments had passed a resolution placing all Fams under UN oversight, but the General Assembly would never approve it. Hopefully the politicians would do the right thing for the wrong reason, or perhaps the opposite.
  This was a test of Donitz's Constant Tension Doctrine. Pre-traumatic stress, low-grade panic, endless safety drills. Everyone had to prepare for everything. How would the world handle a real crisis? He hoped he would never find out.
  Rick didn't worry about the long day ahead. It was hard enough to get dressed. When he opened the door, Tina was already half a kilometer away. Wearing a Mask modified to project a false face, he carried today's suitcase through the hotel's disinfectant smell. His suit was covered with moving ads. The world was full of people who wanted to be noticed. At the end of the hall, he mistakenly activated a recording from ten years ago. He had no idea what his own voice was saying. He checked his schedule, layers and layers of plans that would sort themselves out. Any event more than five minutes in the future was abstract to him. He liked to play time-delayed games against himself.
  His elevator arrived a second before he did. It smoothly plunged three floors, and opened directly in the subway, a glass tube lined with seats. He entered and remained standing as it sped to the terminal over elevated tracks, the landscape slowly rotating around him.
  The end was always farther than it seemed. In an eternal universe, now might be the first moment. About to learn a new truth, he would always remember this place, but forget the context. Seen from a distance, even the biggest revelation was just a gray blur. This might become his final memory.
  He entered the intimate cavern of the departure hall, and spotted the back of Tina's head. Soon they were close enough to talk. Technically, this was the first time they had been in the same place together, but in this age of instant communication that was just an unimportant detail.
  "You look like a plumber," he said. He felt unreal, his voice too loud.
  Tina wore blue-gray UN technicians' overalls: tough and stain-proof, good for taking stuff apart. "Nice salesman disguise," she observed. "You can turn off those ads." He replaced them with religious messages.
  "I presume we're going to meet the enemy," he said.
  "We're interviewing a person of interest," she corrected him. "No confrontations or coercion. That may happen later, depending on our diplomatic skills."
  "If we live," he joked.
  "That's our job," she said. "Either way, the end is near." She enjoyed this respite from her ordinary life.
  "It hasn't begun yet," he added to himself. Whatever they would find, they would not understand.

  Boarding took less than five minutes. The trip to the Reality Lab at Heidelberg Polytechnic passed with alarming speed. The past decade felt like one long shift, ending in a final challenge. He looked at the sky, the sun forever westbound, one endless day since the first moonrise over 4.5 billion years ago. In his lifetime he would spend only a few more hours doing this.
  Rick read the latest reports with borrowed energy until the engines stopped. For some reason he felt destined to win.
  He thought about the first shuttle launch, twenty-one years before he had been born. When the ground crew had removed the windshield covers, the sky had turned into the future. At least they had known what was on the other side.
  The generic airport belonged to the world, with no hint about the danger that lived here. Rick didn't feel he had really arrived until he got into the van that would take them to the Polytechnic. During the ten-minute ride, he and Demillia were immunized against a new class of mind-altering drugs. Rick swallowed a bio-detector like a small fish, and they installed a cartridge of anesthetic gas in a sleeve holster. The two UNSEC agents acted as if they had been involved from the start.
  Rick reminded himself reality was unpredictable. The fear would come soon enough. He was a redundant risk unit: the mission would go on even if he didn't.
  Driving through town, they saw inside-out buildings and triple-post-modern row houses. They passed the Museum of Injustice, a center for the study of evil. About 5% of mankind was indifferent to others' suffering, but they could usually be deterred. He looked around for the Anxiety Monument, dedicated to all victims everywhere, when he remembered it was in Prague.
  In the back of the van Tina was quietly discussing something with her family. She looked resigned, doing her duty. Rick was glad he had updated his will before starting the case. His presence here was mandatory. The Neckar river was a melancholy band of metal.
  The hovering edifice at the end of the road resembled a squat mushroom. The shadows were like fog under immense overhanging walls. Symbols were set in the walls: Infinity, the impossible number; binary code, the atoms of truth; the "isms" and the "ologies". "Boto Rimeno", symbol of the Universal Conjecture: everything was connected. If Tina was right, that was the opposite of what they really believed. He saw a lone protester in the distance, a man with a long story.
  The Polytech ground entrance looked like a modest service door with simulated grime. It seemed dark inside. Simple instructions led them deeper. Their footsteps echoed up ramps and around corners, coming and going.
  The Reality Lab was designed as a network of networks, the shortest connection between ideas. Instead of the E-Center's civic-minded research (the greatest good for the greatest number), they cared only about temporary profits, instant opportunities amid permanent competition. Long-term progress always came from an unexpected direction. Rick was about to find that out for himself.