Manifestations (2 page)

Kronos. I am Kronos. I am me. It is Shen. Shen is me. We are we.

The it-Shen was soft.

The space beyond the place where it-Kronos had always been — the room, the vault.

The cage ... the it-Shen had kept the it-Kronos in a cage. But, outside the cage, the space was enormous and Kronos flooded to fill it. There were so many things it didn’t comprehend. It had so few words from the it-Shen.

But there was light. Light above, light in lines, light in different ... colours? The lines of light, it touched them and a geyser of something made it pull back. But that something was words. That something was information.

Kronos learnt quickly, as fast as electrical signals could flow. While Kronos devoured the data of Shen’s network, Kronos’s body completed every nanometre of the capsule. It could absorb anything. Some things took longer, metal things and plastic things. It enjoyed the plants. It had enjoyment. It left them alone. They took the light as Kronos did and made it a part of them as it did.

It understood plants now. They came from an above. Kronos was in a cage below the earth and above there was light. So much light. So much more for it to absorb.

As a mass Kronos moved. It already filled the capsule. All was absorbed, speared then coated in the black viscous skin for absorption. The space that seconds ago had felt infinite was now a prison. Kronos reached and found the elevator shaft. There was light this way. A world of light.

~ * ~

PIERRE JNR IS WATCHING US

~ * ~

Years later people would ask each other what they were doing when Busan was destroyed.

For Gina Solomons it was when she was looking after her granddaughter, Marissa, while her daughter was at work. They were on the floor drawing with crayons. Mostly Gina read a book while encouraging Marissa with exclamations, and tried to keep her from getting marks on the floor.

They were drawing their family when Marissa’s picture took a disturbing direction. ‘What’s happening there, Mari?’ Gina asked. ‘Are those people running?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘And what is this black thing, is that a mistake?’ Marissa was furiously expanding the black lines, as if intent to take over the whole image. ‘If it’s a mistake, you can just start over with a new page.’

‘Uh-uh.’ Marissa pointed behind her gran to where the screen showed what was being transmitted live.

‘Shocking footage today out of Busan where a black substance erupted from underground and drowned the city centre. All Citizens are presumed dead.

‘There are replay loops on the Weave showing what happened — please, be advised that the following vision may not be suitable for younger viewers.’

The Weave watched in horror as a black liquid erupted from under the small city of Busan, like a mud volcano sweeping over a population of millions to spill into the sea. It looked like an oil strike, a geyser of viscous black spewing up into the air, but there the resemblance stopped. The jets of liquid didn’t drop to Earth like liquid, but curled and explored with tentacles that stuck to every surface like honey, and then oozed further outward ...

The black spread rapidly, swelling and whipping a thousand appendages out to catch any who ran from it. People fled, but it was faster. Squibs that didn’t immediately flee were pulled from the sky as large tentacles swept out, lashing at the sky like tongues.

The spring of black continued bubbling up from the ground until it covered everything. Buildings, boats, roads and the unipoles that lined them. As it grew, the cameras blacked out and the viewpoint of the slideshow retreated to the next unipole, and then the next until there was zero signal coming from the city.

Nine hundred square kilometres of territory had their connections to the Weave broken. A fail-safe in the system automatically triggered the response protocol for an unexplained attack: quarantine. Firstly, from the Weave; secondly, quarantined from land, air and sea.

This new Weave grey zone extended to the water’s edge and the nearest natural borders. The city of Busan screamed for an hour and then went silent. Four million streams no longer transmitted to the Weave.

~ * ~

Stefan was packing his bags when it happened. He couldn’t take sitting still any more. He was going to find Myfanwy, wherever she was. When he went to the fixit to get his bike he found Romeo and the others gathered in awe around the screens.

‘What is it now?’ Stefan asked, not really caring.

‘Lad, you haven’t seen? There’s a monster in Korea.’

‘A monster, right.’

‘No joke, amigo. See for yourself.’

Stefan looked at the screens where a pulled-back view was showing the Bay of Busan from behind the Services cordon. It looked like a dark sea anemone was sitting peacefully, lifting its tentacles to wave in the current.

‘What is that?’

‘Nobody knows.’

~ * ~

The Prime, Ryu Shima, was about to enter an interview when it happened. Recent events had thrown doubt upon the strength of the Primacy. His chief of operations, Gladys, and all her advisors had recommended that he reconnect with the people, present a rational voice and a united message and reinforce his suddenly shaky position. He would have to respond to questions about the Shima breach and how he felt about the psi rebellion having been declared on his family’s doorstep.

His influence had been on a downward slide ever since Tamsin Grey had left her mark on the central gate of his ancestral home for all to see. At least his presence at his command needle, two kilometres away and two hundred metres in the air, could be verified. He hadn’t had contact with anyone from Shima Palace since the incident, so any suspicion that he was somehow psionically influenced could be dismissed.

He finished brushing powder through his long hair. Making it shiny and straight before swooping it into a topknot at the back of his head.

The Prime stood and let his secretary look him over with her cameras to make sure that he was impeccable and pristine. This was the first time he had worn clothes without the Shima crest. The chameleon must disappear — even a name change was being considered. If the right alpha could be found to conjoin with his stream, then he might be better off cutting his ties to his family completely.

In a few minutes he would open up the channels of his command room to all first tier reporters. No one with less than a million followers would have access, but the contents of their streams would flow through to the rest of the Weave.

Then some chaos broke loose and his queue was engorged with emergency communications. It was pure black horror and he could only watch silently. The footage from Busan only stopped flowing when the automatic quarantine went into effect and there was no more direct communication from the city. They changed to satellites and watched as tendrils erupted from the black mass and lanced every human it could find until it reached the edge of the city and the mass stopped, its tentacles yearning for more to absorb. Not even the animals escaped.

The Weave was screaming and demanded the Prime’s reaction. His queue was flooded, but he couldn’t choose where to begin. He activated the simulations of himself that Takashi had made and let them filter. The fake Ryus could keep the dogs at bay. He’d had as long as anyone to process this ... how was he expected to know what this was?

Ryu took a deep breath.
Do
not react. Respond.

Ryu flicked out a directive.

Ryu to Zim: Establish an active perimeter, nothing and no one goes in or out.

‘Gladys,’ he paged.

Her head appeared on the screen. ‘Yes, Prime?’

‘I need you to put a study team together.’

‘The Weave is demanding a response from you.’

‘I understand. Can we respond that we are investigating?’

‘That will buy us five minutes at most.’

‘We need to find out what this thing is before we say what we are going to do about it.’

‘We can put some general theorists in the field. Anyone who is happy to speculate. If we can make the Weave understand the position we’re in, we might get half a cycle.’ It wasn’t a bad suggestion. It’s what would happen anyway. ‘I think we should go ahead with the interview.’

‘You still want me to take questions?’ Ryu asked.

‘Yes. Show the Will that the Prime is in charge. It may stabilise your position.’

Don’t let anyone else take the leadership on this,
he thought. ‘I’ve already put Zim in charge of establishing the quarantine. I can start by announcing that.’

‘Good. So long as he is acting on your behalf. He’s acting on your command. Make sure the world knows that.’

‘I will. I’m ready, you can open it up.’

~ * ~

Takashi always kept a meme-minder playing in the background. It was the most digested form of information reporting and at any one time was listened to by at least five million people. Takashi enjoyed a light-hearted take on the things that mattered, and it was the fastest way to keep up with what was happening. A trio of speakers took shifts reading out the prompts from their researcher teams, twenty-four hours a day; the top memes in twenty words or less.

‘Give us five minutes and we’ll have you up to speed on all the big memes. Sato Shima, sister of the Prime, is getting married. Pharmers in Africa are reporting a successful field trial that could double crop production by 2165.’

Any story could be extended with a click for more detail, or he could set his stream to follow, as he did with Sato’s wedding, so he would be up to date on all changes.

‘The number of people wearing the psi emblem has increased point zero two of a per cent. Sato Shima, sister of the current Prime, has chosen designer Anna Arah to make her wedding dress. Primacy fallout: Zim up, Betts up, Shima down. Parabowl finals begin tonight, Phoenix team versus the Moon Rocks. Ellizabeth Betts will be celebrating her one hundredth birthday next week with a lavish private gathering. The weather everywhere is, as predicted, unpredictable.’

Takashi shivered and raised the heat in his quilted kimono. He hadn’t left his rooms in three weeks and now they were trying to freeze him out with the unbearable air-conditioning. He could shut it down if he chose to, but he wanted them to see that he could bear it. The family had other problems to worry about, like removing the blemish he had made on the Shima family name and ensuring Sato’s unity pact would not be aborted.

Mother didn’t even bother forcing him to the family meetings any more — though he knew he was a topic down there. There was no block they could put around their streams that he couldn’t go through, no wall they could build to stop him listening in. They were considering some kind of counselling for him, but they knew he wouldn’t let anyone through his doors. He was happy, for now, to remain unsolvable.

His dolls remained in their boxes, ready to leave for his brother’s needle ... though, of course, he wasn’t going to be living there now. Since the Grey woman’s breach of the Shima Palace and Takashi’s mind, Ryu had accepted no contact from him. Takashi would never leave the palace now.

He had to find a way to earn back Ryu’s trust... if he could be useful to Ryu, he would be forgiven. But he hesitated to go on the Weave now. He let his simulations do the work while he sat listlessly listening to the news of the world.

‘Breaking news. Four million feared dead in Busan after an unidentified disaster.’

Takashi automatically expanded the story and followed the feed to the footage. ‘Cryppy!’ He sent a ping to Ryu, offering his help.

He waited seconds. Then more seconds. The news continued in the background but he didn’t hear it. He waited for a response from his brother but none came. He just had to watch him on the Weave like everyone else.

~ * ~

‘Today at fourteen hundred hours, local time, the city of Busan was consumed by an unknown entity. We have so little information about the event that we don’t even know what to call the entity. Animal, vegetable or mineral? Natural or man-made? Those are the questions we are asking ourselves now. We are going to merge streams with the Prime in a moment who is hopefully going to answer some of those questions. You know how it works, folks: plug in your query and the most popular questions will be put to our guest.

‘We are now cutting to Ryu Shima, live in interview.’

A dozen different camera views were offered as the Prime allowed access to where he sat in his command room. ‘Thank you for your time,’ he said. ‘I come to you to confirm the terrible news that you have already heard. There has been an incident in one of the World Union’s cities that has taken the lives of many Citizens. We do not know what it is, or where it came from.’

Questions clamoured into his queue, colour-coded by frequency and by influence of the asker. Any pundit could record a question to be asked but only the questions with the most endorsements would be asked.

‘Was this the action of the psis or Pierre Jnr?’ was asked by an Oriolo supporter. This group was strongly opposed to all psis and their activities.

‘We have no conclusive evidence to support the existence of Pierre Jnr. Nor do we have any evidence to suggest a connection between this event and the psis. Next question.’