Solaris Rising 2 (21 page)

Then, last March, without a whisper of warning, astonishing news broke. The corporate office panicked. The announcement was absorbed and often misunderstood and, according to several sources, the vice-presidents told one very loyal officer to find out where the Master was, and then they started to battle about who would deliver the thunderbolt and how.

The officer had ambitious and very bold bonds. On his own initiative, he drove to the Master’s favorite house. There were rings of security to pass through and, getting wind of this event, the vice-presidents called their man to order him home again. But the officer was already inside. He kept imagining the thrill of sharing what he knew with the world’s greatest man. Sitting in what seemed like a random room, the fifty-year-old game player was filling a very comfortable chair, holding a controller while armored gnomes lived in three dimensions, fighting hard for dominion over nothing.

“Sir,” the officer said.

The Master continued to play, apparently not hearing him.

Again, louder this time, he said, “Sir.”

The game was paused. But it took Allegato some time to pull back from the place where he had been, rubbing his eyes and sighing twice before looking over his shoulder at the intruder.

“What is it?” he asked.

“There’s been an announcement, sir.”

But Allegato raised his hand first, silencing him with the gesture. “Your name is Greg, isn’t it?”

An eleven year veteran of the company, Gary knew well enough to nod and say, “Yes, sir.”

“Okay. What’s this announcement?”

“Researchers in Australia designed some new equipment. They were using it to study quantum effects. And they just determined that you were right.”

Allegato had no reaction, save for another small sigh. Then a look of doubt came into the still-handsome face, and he calmly asked, “What am I right about?”

“There are bonds,” Greg/Gary stated.

“What do you mean? Bonds where?”

“The air is full of them, and they’re real, and just like we’ve always said, they weave us together.”

“No,” the great man said.

“But it’s true, sir. They just had a press conference...”

“I meant ‘No, I am not right.’” Allegato picked up the game control, studying a partly disemboweled creature. “I made it all up to begin with. So you see? I can’t be right. I’m just lucky.”

A Team of Dreamers

G
OSSIP AND APOCRYPHAL
stories make unreliable sources, and that’s true with groundbreaking science as well as with affairs of the heart. Something intriguing lay inside an ocean of data. But even the Australian researchers were uncertain what their work meant, and they said so many times. Yes, the universe was laced with subtle quantum relationships. That was always known, at least for the last century-plus. And yes, the human mind seemed to be connected to other minds, including evidence of persistent influences shared between friends and family. The first news conference was wrapped around those modest claims. Then a reporter asked, “What do these bonds look like?” The “bonds” didn’t look like anything. The effects were invisible and always tiny, and everybody at the podium said as much. But once used, the telltale word was embraced. “Bonds” was the most popular word in the world now. It took another three days before the science team realized the significance of the word, and they released a joint statement to warn the public away from a label that delivered history and color and a lot of money-making expectations.

Yes, something new had been found. But the discoverers were hardware savants armed with competent software. Those Australians were in no special place to assess the new phenomenon, and the real groundbreaking work required theorists possessing special training and the interest and a properly warped nature, plus that rarest blessing, which was the free time to invest in the chase.

We are the hunters.

Counts vary, but there are about fifty of us worldwide. We know each other mostly through webcams and emails. Some of us are graduate students, others tenured professors, while the largest group are presently unattached to any major institution – the result of economic downturns and little scandals, bouts with mental illness and probably more than a few cases of plain stubbornness.

Except by reputation, we didn’t know one another before this. Yet now we’re in the same grand endeavor, and bonds have formed. We talk about this daily. And we use the word “bonds” without qualifiers or scorn. Our new mathematics has been woven into the physical research, and we can put numbers to the ways that the fifty of us are bonded. We aren’t one mind united by a holy quest, no. But in a given twenty-four hour period, on average, the fifty of us share one-and-a-third thoughts that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.

Allegato demands our attention. Last year, most of us didn’t give a damn about the man. Yet while the media keep simplifying and misunderstanding our work, they can’t stop talking about linked minds and Allegato’s innate genius. It pisses us off. Every month, a fresh edition of
Bonds
is released, and each volume culls a few of our equations to illustrate points that were never intended. Doesn’t the world understand that the man is a phony? How can brilliant people like us be so unappreciated while his organization of con artists and tag-alongs continues to swallow up billions in new revenue?

That’s why the old hermit can’t be ignored. The world talks about Allegato, and some of those thoughts leak our way. Our math gives us a reliable number: We endure six and a third Allegato moments every day, and some of us think about him quite a lot more than that, particularly now.

Several months ago, one of the Master’s officers contacted us, and because my name was first on the latest paper, I ended up being the rich First-Bonder.

The young woman had two tasks: to show me a pretty face and a polite, respectful manner, and once that goal was met, to arrange a video conference between my group and hers.

Twenty-three of our fifty were present at the meeting. Some of us expected Allegato at their end, but of course he wasn’t present. One of us asked about the man, and we were told that he was quite healthy – did we think otherwise? – and he was certainly watching the feed but preferred to keep a low profile, which was everyone’s right, and since our time was precious, shouldn’t we move things along?

“Things” included us describing exactly what we were doing and what it meant to science and human existence.

Every living mind was connected to every other mind. “Bond” was a poor word, implying some sort of profoundly stubborn joining. There wasn’t anything like that, at least not that we could see. What our work showed us were influences and the ghostly quantum motion of information. “Thoughts” didn’t do justice to the concept. In a random day, there were anywhere from five hundred to a thousand thoughts that would pop into existence inside a healthy adult cortex. And yes, that seemed like a lot, but the number needed a proper context. Most “thoughts” went unnoticed by the conscious mind. The average person ignored a thousand “thoughts” every minute, and the ghostly glimmers arriving from outside were usually weaker than those generated by the resident brain.

In the media, self-described experts were promising that the world could be woven together with some kind of a telepathic Internet. But that was a farfetched if not out-and-out ridiculous thought. There was a lot of neurological rain falling, but most of it was senseless and, in any storm, who can count individual drops?

We ran out of thoughts that we were willing to share verbally. And when the silence was noted, the pretty lead woman smiled and straightened her back, telling us, “Well, thank you. This has been very fun and informative, and I know that all of us feel energized by this last hour. Thank you very much.”

The conference ended with a blank screen.

Three hours later, the PR wing of Allegato’s organization went into overdrive. A clipped and deeply misleading version of our conference was given to the world, and with it came words attributed to nobody. That’s when we learned that our work was lending meat to bones laid down by the famous man himself. According to the nameless spokesperson, Dr. Desmond Allegato believed this was the moment to step forward and accept the duty for which he was born. He wasn’t merely a deep thinker and a grand scientist, but in a world tied together by infinite Bonds, there had to be a leader, and who would be half as perfect as him?

The Bondless Man

A
S MENTIONED, THERE
are fifty of us, give or take. Some of us feel like “grand scientists”, but most realize that he or she has some narrow strength as well as broad limitations in a venue that was invisible just a year ago. On the whole, we love our work. We accept being collaborative. We respect some peers and despise others. Lying awake in the night, each of us contemplates pseudo-telepathy and quantum mysticism, and we imagine future successes while our sleepless minds play with erratic and lovely high mathematics. But there is no way to avoid thinking about Allegato – he is never “Dr. Allegato” to us – and that turn of the mind never helps any of us fall back to sleep.

The long hermitage seems finished. The man who never appeared in public is suddenly ubiquitous. As in old times, he has begun holding little seminars with select audiences, but this time cameras are invited so that the video can be diced and carefully remixed and then released as web events and extended commercials. The old salesman looks handsome and respectable and maybe a little heavy. But Allegato walks quickly on a small brightly-lit stage, and with a strong certain voice he speaks about Bonds and how they define so much of us, and every religion stems from the Bonds, and all intellect and even the smallest emotion too.

His last twenty years have been spent in contemplation, he says, and what he has learned is enormous. Eight Tier is the highest level on the official Allegato Scale, but he is a genuine Twelve, living in a world full of bright Bonds that are lovely and obedient to him. In one more year, perhaps sooner, he will reach the ultimate Tier, which is so important and powerful that it doesn’t wear a number, and at that point he will know how to influence most of what happens in the world.

The world probably isn’t seeing the genuine Allegato. That’s our best guess, at least. Digital invention has reached a point where any damn thing can be put together out of zeros and ones, but we know what we know. The cold soul from the old video could never have become so relaxed and smooth and charming, and particularly not after years spent playing his games. I knew that immediately. But somebody else in our group saw the deeper meaning. “That’s not our Desmond,” she announced. “That’s Parcy with a new body and voice. Don’t you see?”

We see too much. The man’s fine face is everywhere, and he makes it into the news most days. His first new book in decades was released just last month, and I read it in one long bad evening and then tried to get my peers to look at the words. The old Allegato was a slippery character who at least delivered a comforting product. But this new incarnation isn’t a simple commercial machine. He wants power. He is religion. His agenda is broad and well-planned, although it is impossible to know just what the ultimate goal is. Does his organization want to bump up the profits another notch, or is this some wild bid to gain a chokehold on civilization?

Some of my associates read the book, and a few of them were appropriately offended. But as much as we might worry about a new prophet, and as angry as it makes us to see our smart words and math used to bolster his faith, the bulk of our days are still spent trying to comprehend the nature of everything. And while I was reading Allegato’s Bible for a second time, an associate in Cairo pieced together three other people’s work and then added something of his own, making a discovery that nobody expected, or wanted, or could ignore.

I
’M NOT SURE
when I decided to pay Allegato a visit. The idea was a whisper between louder thoughts, and then it was a possibility enjoyed over pancakes. I played with the imagery for several days, writing conversations without bothering about the mechanics of how to make the meeting real. And I can’t say for certain when I decided to make the attempt. But I was sitting in my little office when I saw the obvious possibility: maybe this wasn’t my idea at all. Maybe the fabled seer was genuine, and he was guiding me, and I had no power or right to deny what he saw as an important step in his inevitable rise.

The face of true madness looks this way – hard and obvious and always practical.

Allegato owned twelve or fifteen mansions, and maybe part of Samoa. But I knew about the residence near the corporate headquarters, and a four-hour drive would put me at a reasonable starting place. In my mind were two scenarios: I would be expected in some fashion, or I would be turned away by the first layer of security. One scenario seemed likely but both had their appeal. What I didn’t expect was to find several thousand people ahead of me. A town of pitched tents and rain ponchos had grown up on a horse pasture. My IQ might be the stuff of wonders, but it seemed that everyone has sufficient genius when it came to this kind of quest, and I was stunned.

After parking in the mud, I walked through a steady rain. Strangers approached, asking my Tier and my name. I made noises, but nobody was really listening. There was a good deal of mental in some faces, but it was a lucid woman who winked at me before saying, “I feel Him, I see His lovely Bonds, and He has left us.”

“Left us?” I asked, imagining the Pacific Island.

“When the final Tier takes Him, a light will sing to all of us and we will know His splendor.”

Shoring up my frail sanity, I reached the gate and a guardhouse.

I expected robots or at least brusque professionals. What I found instead was a bored and very fat man sitting behind bars and glass. He didn’t speak to me, and I don’t know if he heard me. I was just another idiot, and he did what he did a hundred times every day: he swung a thumb at the panel fixed to a tiny detached kiosk.