Bread Crumbs In Mobius Space

Bread Crumbs in Mobius Space By

Larry Ayres V1.00-2003 Larry Ayres c/o Electronic Services Unit 16 11245 183rd St, Suite 223 Cerritos, CA 90703 310.291.7662 [email protected]

www.esunit16.com

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PART I

Chapter 1 His cilia were about to go on strike. Row by row they had been abused by high decibel sound levels and had taken to lying down on the job, squealing complaints constantly in his ear. Even above the whine of the 1150cc rotary engine on his motorcycle, they protested the torture of the previous evening. Last night he had played a real concert, with real amplification and with the players and audience in physical attendance. He wondered, what other art form required its performer to damage the sensory organ of his craft? Then he had to admit to himself: the wounds were self-inflicted. He could have used ear guards, but plastic attenuators blunt the raw, visceral feeling of performing almost as much as playing on a virtual stage. He was of a vanishing breed. Since before he was born, music, indeed most arts, had been dying. Oh, there was plenty of talk about art, many museums, uncountable video shows and satellite radio programs crammed full of the sights and sounds of people whom press agents called artists. But in fact, most were merely moderately attractive people whose minimal talents (and lack of surgical enhancements) would have relegated them to some clerical job 50 years earlier. However, to the masses, they had the appearance of an artist (if not the training), and they had the sound of an artist, since technology could repair any defect in ability or shortcoming in talent. And they pleased these masses, if only long enough for them and their handlers to make a small fortune, until some other "artist" captured their spot on top for 15 minutes. Yes, he was of a vanishing breed; Billy could actually play his bass, and play it extremely well. William Derricks was tracing a sinusoidal path down the switchbacks of the coastal range in western Oregon, heading for a beach he was sure would be deserted. Chocolate brown, compact, muscular, boyish yet imposing with his shaved head under a heads-up display helmet, he had left the club right after the last encore, letting the road crew strike the equipment for transport to the next live gig, sometime next week, somewhere else. Billy didn't take too much notice of when and where. Since he was rarely out of touch he'd get the information regardless, and he had an intuitive sense of which way to travel, just so he was never more than a day from the next concert. Most of his performances were virtual anyway, and with his Sat-Link he could jam from just about anywhere. Besides, he wasn't one to hang around in a club late at night anyway. So he had chosen this beach in front of him on this late September morning, just a few hours before the European Cyber Consort was to link

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with him for a Net performance of "The Wall" on the 53rd anniversary of its release. (Enough still lived to appreciate this milestone in modern artrock). Gilmore was still alive but the rest were gone. In his eighties, the guitarist's chops had deteriorated; however the notes were all in his head, and that was all that mattered on the virtual stage. Billy was covering the Waters part, a great honor, though the vocals were left to another. A hell of a thing for a ULSI chip designer to be doing, he thought, for that was what he really was, a first-class, PhD holding, IEEE cardcarrying, hardware engineer. Playing bass was his avocation, not his vocation. What a coup, though, to be in on that gig, albeit in NetSpace. At the opening of the third millennium, thanks to his Sat-Link, he could design or perform from anywhere his bike could take him, as well as places it couldn't. For circuit layout it didn't matter if he was isolated from his colleagues, but there was something not quite right about playing music when your band mates were spread all around the world. On stage there was real eye contact, body language, nuance, hell, even a scent that connected the players. It takes sound less time to cross a large stage than it takes data to fly from Europe; there was an obvious disconnect. The threshold of perception in time is supposed to be around 10ms, but the 50ms lag from the other side of the world screwed up the feel something terrible. So music that was slower and less metrical was better suited to intercontinental ensembles. Finally, the trigonometric road became Euclidean, and the beach, empty this early on a chilly but clear morning, presented itself like a easel for his musical murals. Sure, he was tired, but an occasional bump to his circadian rhythms was a good thing, especially in the service of such a excellent cause. The chill air would keep him fresh for a few more hours, when he would find a little motel and get some sleep. Billy parked his bike at the end of the unpaved road where the sand got too deep for one-wheel drive. His Sat-Link had been charging off the bike the whole trip from Eugene and was good for about four hours of transmission, sufficient for “The Wall”. It wasn't heavy, even with the power-pack and VR gear, so he packed it out over the dunes and onto the sand. Such beauty, the Oregon beach at sunup, desolate, sounding of surf and smelling of spray. The Alaskan Gulf was gearing up to deliver some wicked storms, but so far only a whisper of the coming winter was in the air. With a slight sigh for the coming loss of tranquility he assembled the equipment and donned the VR shades and headphones, and attached the EEG patches to his shaved scalp. (Some fanatics actually had implants, but Billy was wary of becoming a wirehead.) These took over his senses of sight and hearing, even through his protesting ears--the rotary's whine hadn’t allowed much rest for them. Dawn and the ocean roar were replaced

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by a classical concert stage and echoing techies shouting commands through their interfaces. The sea smell was so incongruous in this space. Virtual reality had come a long way since the 1980s. Back then VR was little more than a motion picture with surround sound, requiring a lot of bulky, expensive equipment to produce an interesting but unconvincing unreal environment; therefore VR was reserved for amusement parks and industrial simulations. No one ever mistook one of these adventures for the real thing. Improvements in VR had come in three areas: the equipment had become much smaller and lighter and eventually portable. Increased bandwidth technologies allowed interactivity, first wired and then wireless, between VR adventurers. And the sensation of being elsewhere was improved. By limiting real world input to the mind through swamping the eyes and ears, and by subtly altering perceptibility with proprietary lowpower EM radiation, the virtual experience was now more like a dream than a ride. There was no denying that it was a virtual space you had entered, but with a little imagination and concentration the experience was engrossing. Still, if ocean spray were blowing on your face you'd smell it, feel the wetness, feel the chill. It took him only a moment to establish a handshake with the Consort. They weren't quite all online yet; some were involved in getting Gilmore past his daily medication and connected up. But all reports were that the last remaining Floyd was eager to get started. Before signing on with the GameChamp megacorporation, Billy had been a freelance consultant and was himself responsible for some of this remarkable technology. He had been chief human input engineer for the MIVI spec: Musical Instrument Virtual Interface. A combination of gesture and EEG input, it allowed the musician to manipulate a single instrument or entire orchestra, with a supreme sense of nuance being the operative skill. A non-musician made just as bad a screeching noise on a virtual violin as he did on a wooden one, maybe worse; MIVI was no shortcut to proficiency. Once adept, though, a virtuoso could play beyond his wildest fantasy. No instrument was ever accidentally out of tune, ever broke a string, ever had a value clog with spit. Never did a cymbal crack or a stick break. More, the range of any instrument could be stretched across the extent of human hearing, and the dynamics expanded from thresholds of hearing to pain. MIVI took the fine art of sampling to the edges of perception. It also meant more training and practice of course, more years of study, but true musicians were used to that. Net technologies removed any constraint on venue. Tonight the group was in the round in the Royal Albert Hall, clearly impossible in the Real World. In addition, everyone in the audience had a front row seat while everyone else seemed to be sitting behind. Since this was a

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traditional performance where the Wall would be built during the show, floating and soaring in the audience was discouraged, lest it ruin the effect of the band's self-imposed isolation. With the arrival of David Gilmore, looking, virtually, as he did in 1980, the band started tuning up. While the MIVI program could keep everyone in mathematically perfect intonation, manual maladjustment gave the music a more human, organic sound. If the equipment could do everything, what use was there for human performers? Purely cybernetic players were possible, with random parameters and improvisation algorithms to simulate anything from Perlman to Prince, but why? Finally everyone was ready. The techies were at their monitors, the band was plugged in, the audience was primed, and global concert began as a Spitfire flamed overhead and crashed into the second mezzanine, killing hundreds, much to their delight. The singer sounded remarkably like Roger Waters (and without a vocal processor!) and of course David Gilmore was David Gilmore, the consummate Floydian. Many of the animations that had been flashed 2D on the wall in 1980 were now marching, diving, and swirling around the band and the audience. Everyone knew The Wall word for word, gesture for gesture, and when the time came the concert-goers shouted in unison, "leave us kids alone!" The effect was bloodcurdling. Billy guessed that the Neo-Nazi scene would be extraordinarily disturbing. All in all, the outcome was intoxicating. The honor of being chosen to play, the gestalt of the band, the rapport with the audience, the scope of the performance--this was turning out to be the best virtual concert he'd ever been involved with. It wasn't like the little blues club last night in Eugene. Nothing could really replace that. But god, this was good! Yet Billy had the nagging sense that something was not quite right. Something was missing. Nothing musical; everything was as perfect as it could be, given the transmission delays from around the world. The audience was digging it enormously; he could feel that even over the ethernet. He felt fine, not tired or fuzzy, given his lack of sleep. And a quick check during a tacit showed his equipment was working on spec. Then, The smell of the ocean! Where had it gone? Billy sniffed but smelled nothing but stage smoke, something he shouldn't even be able to do. This was not part of the MIVI algorithms! Had someone hacked the code, introduced a virus? Or was it a bug, or a fault in the transmission satellite? This anomaly concerned him so much that he missed his cue for "Comfortably Numb". He rarely choked in a performance, and for a splitnanosecond he was terribly embarrassed. But just as quickly he realized that his part was in perfect resonance with the band, despite his gaff! He

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looked around and saw no dirty looks from the other musicians, and when he turned back he was stunned to see Billy Derricks playing bass, enraptured by the music! At that moment a door opened in free space (not unusual in virtual space save that it was in the presence of his doppelganger) and a small, well-dressed man stepped through and said, "Good morning, Mr. Derricks, and welcome home!"

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Chapter 2 Sareena Pradashmatra was very grateful that her parents had moved her and her three sisters and four brothers out of Calcutta to Hong Kong. Her ambitious father Amish had barely been able to sustain them in India working for a small shirt factory, and the family was always wanting for decent food, clean housing, clothing for the kids--all the things the government promised but couldn't deliver. The children had worked (or begged) while her mother tried to get a private software business going, but the boundless bureaucracy, the endless forms and the suppressive socialist regulations had made private enterprise all but impossible in India, now a nation of over 2 billion. Hong Kong, on the other hand, was a haven for entrepreneurs, despite its higher costs and limited space. The British had done a marvelously cagey thing when they returned the city-state to China late in the last century. Just as a single giggle percolates through a crowd and swells into booming laughter, this outpost of capitalism spread its message of aspiration through the New Territories, up the peninsula to the mainland, where the huge ancient nation got caught up in the profit, pride, and joy of private enterprise. Old school communism fell without a shot being fired, and an enormous market opened up for the rest of the world, Britain included. India alone in the world remained mired in socialism, and it grew in population while its citizens watched their standard of living decline. In China on the other hand, the populace learned two valuable lessons: people are far more efficient and productive when there is personal responsibility and commensurate reward, and that an affluent population has less inclination to procreate. Its numbers had stabilized at 1.4 billion in 2011 and were declining to more manageable levels. Sareena's family had rented two flats up Nathan St. past Kowloon Park. Both were in a high-rise apartment building, but only one of them was high up. It served as the primary residence; the other was on the ground floor and was the de facto office for her mother Prarthana's burgeoning software business. It also was an overflow bedroom for the two oldest children, Sareena herself and her slightly younger sister Indu. Indu was more like her father, who was working as a salesman in one of the many shops along Nathan St. But Sareena wanted to code like her mother. And code she did. Computers had been ubiquitous for almost half a century, and coding in the older but still functional languages of C++, Python, and Java was a basic skill taught to elementary students around the world. It was as if the human genome had incorporated a coding chromosome sometime since the turn of the century. Not that any serious programming was done in these older languages. They survived the way ballet or music lessons

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survived, as something for the kids to try to see if they have the knack. And like ballet and music, most kids didn't have the knack. But Sareena did. She took to programming at an early age, mastering her juvenile computer by age five then becoming bored with it. The family PC was tortured for several years before the Pradashmatra clan left India and could afford to buy (read: were allowed to buy) a second, then a third and fourth home computer, as Sareena systematically deconstructed all the hard-, firm- and software on each new PC. Truth be told, if it weren't for Sareena's knack, her mother would have had a tougher time starting her business. Yet the child's constant upgrading, networking and debugging allowed Mom to concentrate as much on selling code as writing it. Sareena did well in school, eschewing the sports and social activities her siblings found all-important. She was pretty girl with the traditional long dark straight hair, a thin but developing figure, who was remarkably uninterested in the fashion and cosmetics girls entering their teens live for. She was unusually pragmatic about school, seeing it as an important duty, taking academics for all they were worth, then escaping at the end of the day to her computers. After her daily maintenance tasks for her mother she indulged in what she had been living for since her first exposure nine years earlier: living in the virtual universe of the Net. When Sareena discovered the Net at age four she was entranced, staying in her training VR rig for hours, much to the concern of her parents. Pre-schoolers ordinarily didn’t have this level of concentration. But as the years passed, and her indulgence in things virtual didn't seem to hinder her health, social development, or scholastic achievement, they accepted the fact that their oldest daughter was one of the newest generation of human, one who could pass from the Real World to the cybernetic world without batting an eye, yet always keeping them separate and distinct. Her Net existence provided many opportunities for Sareena to hone her coding skills, and her online friends were all bright kids whose parents sometimes turned out to be new customers for Sareena's Mom. So it was not unusual for Sareena to be romping vicariously through a distant code library, searching out a routine for her latest hack, as night slipped into another hot, muggy morning in Hong Kong. It was Sunday, meaning no school and no housekeeping commitments, so she could sleep later. Slogging through Gigalines of programming with her trusty bots, she finally found an old algorithm, originally written in, of all things COBOL, and cut it into her code. Triumph! But she was too weary to celebrate. By now the Sun was up and blazing, even in late September, but she decided to go offline for a bit and get the harbor air despite the heat. Had she found her routine earlier, she could have hit the Promenade before

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the mercury passed 30o. No matter, the Central District skyline would be beautiful, the walkway would be sparsely populated, and she needed to stretch her legs and her mind. Sareena threw on a t-shirt, shorts and sandals, slipped quietly out of the building and ambled down Nathan toward the water. No garish neon or laser lights: the shops were closed this early on Sunday, but here and there was a breakfast nook ready for business. The international ambience of Hong Kong was reinforced in these establishments by the fare: rice, noodles, and doughnuts. Making a short side-excursion through Kowloon Park, she passed the swimming pools and crossed a bridge over one of the ponds; the flamingos were sleeping on one foot, long pink necks curled back to tuck their heads under their wings, and the turtles and fish hadn't yet surfaced looking for handouts from tourists. Sareena turned right after the flamingo pond and climbed some steep stairs to the top of a small hill. From here she could see northward the whole shopping district, the community center and the pool, and the upper floors of her apartment complex. She admired the view for a few moments, but grew anxious; her all-nighter was beginning to take its toll, and the young programmer wanted to get in at least a short walk before her body demanded sleep. Turning back down the steep stairs Sareena expected to see the flamingos again, but instead found herself on a path that didn't seem familiar. She'd practically lived in Kowloon Park these past nine years--it was one of the few outdoor places open to her. So she was surprised at the strangeness of this walkway. Chalk it up to exhaustion, she mused; she did a 180 and climbed back up those stairs. At the top she was startled to see, not the pool nor her living quarters, but a view southward of the Central District skyline! How could this be? She'd never seen this sight from this vantage point; she must be more tired than she thought. And there was no one around to ask query about this anomaly. Forget the walk by the harbor; time to get home to bed! Taking a different descending path Sareena finally landed on a familiar trail, one that would take her back to the north side of the park. She was again startled, and beginning to get worried, when this path deadended in the aviary, which should have been on the other side of the flamingo pond. She turned around and headed back up the trail to the stairs she had just descended, and found that they led down, not up. And still no one around; the park was completely deserted, which was frightfully unusual. Sareena stopped and took a deep breath, then realized it was the only sound she heard. The morning birds had ceased their dawn songs. Traffic noises were usually muffled by the trees, masked by the water sounds, but she heard neither cars nor water. She carefully

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walked down the stairs to find herself at the overlook facing the swimming pool. It was like being trapped in an Escher painting! The heat, the climbing, the frustration, and her exhaustion now conspired against Sareena. The park swirled around her--why hadn't I taken my phone with me?--and she slumped down against the truck of a Banyan tree. The relative cool of the shade was intoxicating, soporific, and within seconds, helpless, she lost consciousness.

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Chapter 3 The common wisdom was that mathematicians did their best work in their twenties, then spent the rest of their lives embellishing, almost like fishermen who recall the big one that didn't get away. James Navell didn't quite fit this mold. He came to the discipline late in life, for a mathematician at least (at age twenty-eight), and didn't publish until he was thirty-one. Princeton admissions had stretched a bit in accepting such an "elderly" man to the program, but his uncle and cousin had both been Tigers, and they put pressure on the Registrar on James' behalf. The Math department was not disappointed. That first paper, evolutionary but not revolutionary, went further to explain the nature of randomness that any previous work, and vindicated his stature as the program's oldest junior. By the time James was in graduate school he had published or copublished six more papers and had chosen his dissertation subject: numerical analysis. This he studied furiously to the near-exclusion of actually finishing his doctorate, but eventually he defended and published a lengthy but insightful paper on the nature of enormous numbers. The now Doctor Navell had had the intuitive sense that mathematics was preoccupied with small numbers, values less than 10100. Not that this prejudice wasn't somewhat justified; even the number of particles in the universe was twenty orders less than this arbitrary upper limit of interesting numbers. The assumption was that larger numbers, which he dubbed super-valued, didn't really describe anything, and behaved normally in any event. To James this seemed as if a group of tadpoles got together and decided that any other body of water was like their pond, only bigger. He found it necessary to devise a new system to deal with these super-valued numbers (even the term "astronomical" was woefully insufficient to express their magnitude). He invented the concept of "Exalog" which combined the centuries-old logarithm idea with microprocessor-based algorithmic numerical methods. Before the Exalog even the fastest supercomputers would take centuries for simple calculations with super-valued numbers. But now that this hurdle was cleared, James began to see that small-value chauvinism had blinded the mathematics community to many new ideas. He was neither a Wile nor a Penrose, but even one of the crowd at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies was a star anywhere else. James left New Jersey, turning down a post-doc in favor of an assistant professor position at the University of Virginia. Here he had been for a decade, attaining full professorship just last year with the publication of his fifth paper on super-valued numbers. He was a good teacher, always willing to help even the lowliest liberal arts student with his liberal arts

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math, lamenting all the while to himself the "emathculation" of education. He watched wave upon wave of underclassmen struggle through elementary arithmetic, each year’s group of pupils less capable than the last. The political changes that had taken place in 2016, freeing many from the oppressive yoke of an intrusive government, took time to seep down into education and had yet to liberate youngsters from teachers hired for reasons other than an ability to teach. (Old school bureaucrats had retreated but not left the field; James felt that they would never leave). Consequently even rudimentary critical thinking skills were ignored, and children were promoted, regardless of achievement, to avoid the stigma of low selfesteem. So the mathematics department slowly atrophied as fewer and fewer students majored in the subject. What kept them alive (as well as Physics, Chemistry, and other hard sciences) was the notion that Mathematics, any mathematics, was essential for a well-rounded education. Many Regents and Trustees openly declared this idea was antiquated; secretly they disagreed, but they were pressured by local politicians and the vast innumerate population to dumb down the degree requirements. Consequently the school offered dozens of sections of trivial mathematics--arithmetic, pre-algebra, "reform" elementary algebra taught at a snail's pace, as well as "checkbook mathematics" and the like--while cutting sections of calculus and differential equations to the bone. Every semester there were only one, maybe two, upper division advanced topic seminars for majors, and one graduate seminar. The fact that it now took majors five years, including summers, to complete an undergraduate degree discouraged the few budding mathematicians at the school, further diminishing the department. James coined a phrase, the "preponderance of the picayune" to describe the situation. There were more than enough elementary classes to go around, but competition for the seminars was fierce; most teachers had to content themselves with their research for intellectual stimulation. Publish or perish didn't seem so harsh, given the alternative of using your PhD to teach fractions. Despite the slow decline of academia he was content; here in his mid-forties he was doing the research he chose, had a secure position with a good salary and plenty of time off. This he spent giving lectures on super-valued numbers to MAA conferences around the country. He had an older but well-kept ranch-style house west of Charlottesville with plenty of land, vast enough so that neighbors were at a comfortable distance. Not much for pets, James had acquired a big black cat who had wandered onto his property one night after losing a fight. Whatever had hurt the feline must have been big, since Bugger, as James called him, was a sturdy kitty. James had a vet fix him up, then fed him until the cat was ready to move

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on, which he never did. He adopted James as much as James adopted him, as is the way of cats. He had never married; having no desire for children and being a mathematician seemed to be a double hex on his love life. James deduced years ago that big biceps and barely restrained sexual aggressiveness were far more alluring than a big brain. Must have something to do with a woman's need for a safe and secure nest for her offspring, he guessed. With only a few hundred chances to procreate during her lifetime, as opposed to the tens of thousands of opportunities for a man to spread his genes, finding the right donor, provider and protector was more important to a woman than finding a man who could do a 4X4 determinant in his head. Not that he was unattractive. Long and lean, mildly unkempt brown hair, with a smoother face than his years would indicate, thanks to the Southard genes. His uncle J. Southard (for whom he was named) had cleared ninety-five, was still in pretty good shape physically and was in excellent mental condition, owing to his own life as an academician. James had a quiet, easy manner, often just sitting and watching the world trickle by. Unbeknownst to observers who thought he was merely woolgathering, he usually was engaged in some deep mental adventure, with the grand parade of life providing enough stress relief for him to maintain concentration without getting a migraine. James would lounge on his broad front porch in view of the country road which passed his house, musing about the consequences of his researches and fantasizing that one day a woman would just walk right up his driveway and actually like the idea that he was a bright guy. And one late September dusk, the kind that whispers that winter will soon be creeping over the Blue Ridge Mountains, his fantasy actually happened, though not the way James had ever expected.

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Chapter 4 Billy stared incredulously at the man. He was late middle-aged, slightly portly, wearing a tuxedo with a top hat, and in his left hand was a long cherry cigarette holder with a lighted cigarette. Billy found his voice and wanted to yell at the interloper "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?" but he wasn't certain that the audience wouldn't pick that up. So instead he whispered in a terse soto voce "who the hell are you?" "Mr. Derricks, you should call be Nathan, I think. Yes, Nathan is a good name. A fine name, a name that speaks volumes without overstating the obvious," the little gnome of a man said in a small but surprisingly resonant voice with just a trace of an old British accent. "OK OK, but what the hell are you doing here? This is a big concert! I don't care if you can hack into our space, I'm not impressed. Get the fuck out!" "Mr. Derricks, no need to use profanity! I have not "hacked" your concert. Look around, it proceeds normally." Which it did. "I have just removed you from story, leaving a bookmark, so to speak. And I am here to present you with an opportunity, one which we hope you will embrace. But if not, no harm done, and you may rejoin your group." Billy was calming down. It's difficult to remain blustery when the object of your wrath is so affable. Besides, his curiosity was getting the best of him. He looked sideways at the little man. "What kind of opportunity?" Nathan looked pleased. He could tell he had hooked the fish. All that was left was to reel him in. "You are known to us Mr. Derricks. Oh yes, very well known as a fine engineer. No, a great engineer, perhaps one of the best living engineers." A little flattery is always a productive way to start a deal. "Your human interface devices are most impressive. Most impressive indeed. They allow one to be almost anywhere one can imagine, without the constraints of those inconvenient laws of physics and probability. Pesky they are, those laws." Billy looked around self-consciously. “The Wall” was proceeding well with one Billy Derricks rapt in his bass playing. The other Billy was talking to a nutball. "I represent a group embarking on a great and important project, an adventure, one with a considerable backing from, ah, anonymous capital. This project, if successful, will alter the nature of virtual reality and all other realities as well." Now Billy knew he was talking to a nutball. "The team we are assembling is a small one, only four others besides myself. We will have a theoretician, a software engineer, a

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hardware engineer--hopefully you Mr. Derricks--and a pilot. I will be acting as coordinator." Nutcase he may be, but Nathan had that way of talking that drew you in, like a carnival barker or a snake-oil salesman. "Now we know you have a commitment to the GameChamp Corporation; we are prepared to offer them a considerable sum to borrow you for about twelve months, or even buy out your contract. Your salary would be generous, but your real reward will come from the fruits of this project." "Just what are you building, anyway?" Billy asked. "A way out, Mr. Derricks. A way out. For security reasons, I cannot reveal the details here. This is not a secure space. But if you will accompany me, we will meet shortly with the other members of the team for breakfast. Over a fine meal I will explain fully. Do not worry, Mr. Derricks. If you decide not to join us you us you merely have to sign a non-disclosure agreement and we will return you to your performance." The truth is, Billy was getting bored with designing cerebral interfaces for GameChamp. He had been there, he had done that, he was over it. Nathan was weird, but you couldn't deny his technology. The little man had entered the virtual Royal Albert Hall and pulled him aside, replacing him with an avatar without missing a note. And somehow he had removed any evidence of the beach Billy was sitting on. He didn't feel hungry or tired even though it must be almost noon. "OK, Nathan. I'll listen to your plan. I guess you're nearby. It'll take me a few minutes to power down this rig..." "Not necessary, Mr. Derricks," Nathan flicked his cigarette holder into thin air where it vanished; pop! With a wide grin he said, "I am delighted that you will join our little repast. Delighted! But it is not necessary to remove your equipment. Just follow me." The door on the stage opened again. Looking through it Billy saw a pier with a little restaurant at the end. How filling can a virtual breakfast be anyway? he thought. I'll have to get something real to eat later. Ah, what the hell! "Lead on, D'artangnon, lead on."

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Chapter 5 How many lives can one live in four score and ten, Kathryn wondered. Barely thirty-one years old, here she was finishing up another twist of her mortal coils, her fourth. First, student-actress; next, dancer, ostensibly; up until recently, kept woman; now, what? pornographic puppeteer? How, as a little girl. she wanted to be a movie star! Her earliest recollections were of the little dramas she put on for her family. Later she had pushed her way into the lead of every school play, deservedly so. The whole small Chicago suburb came out to watch the precocious little blond girl play everything from Cinderella to Mary Poppins. “That girl's got real talent,” they all said. Her bedroom had been adorned with one-sheets of her favorite actresses: Kim Catrall, Christina Ricci, Joan Greenwood, Audrey Hepburn, Jodie Foster--"Contact" had been her all-time favorite film. She had been the archetypal drama-club girl in high school, and when it came time to go to college, her parents withdrew half their retirement funds to send Kathryn to USC. What followed was too much the hackneyed small-town girl in the big city cliché, almost too maudlin to bear. Yet stereotypes don't spring into existence from nothing; they follow a well-worn path because many had walked it before. Kathryn found that USC and LA were very expensive, much more than she anticipated despite the grants and scholarships. She shared a large house in Watts with several other film students, but despite every effort at frugality she could not make ends meet. And she couldn't ask her folks for more money, she just couldn't! Kathryn was determined to finish school, so for extra money she served drinks at a local college bar. She quickly found that tips from students were few and niggardly; it couldn't be otherwise since she and her customers were in the same situation. Soon Kathryn found herself serving at a "gentleman's club" in Pasadena, where the gentlemen were few but the tips were forthcoming and much more generous. The management recognized her natural talent (read: trim, curvaceous figure) and goaded her into working the stage. She had never been shy about her body, and it wasn't completely nude dancing, and there was no sex involved; Kathryn looked upon this "promotion" as merely a role to play, one that her suburbanite, nominally Christian parents would never discover. After a time she was seduced, not by management, but by money. For two years she had tried to get even a bit part in a B movie to no avail, all the while making good grades at school with good notes on her performances. Concurrently the money was rolling in from her dancing; she found she could pay for her junior year tuition without hitting up her

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folks again. This was a slight problem, as her parents would be very suspicious about a part-time job that was paying her $40K a year. So she put the funds aside, resolving to pay her folks back when it was discreet to do so. It was in the beginning of her third year at USC, while dancing, that she met Leon. He was a grandfatherly figure who had recently started frequenting her "gentleman's club", but in his case Leon actually was a gentleman, and he always tipped her outrageously. Eventually they became friends; Leon was at that advanced age when memories were more practical than actions, and was wistfully aware of that fact, so Kathryn felt at ease. He had spent his life amassing a tidy fortune, and was spending it prodigiously to avoid leaving it to his only and slacker son. Leon was entranced by her dancing, but at the same time he thought it was demeaning, although she didn't see it that way. Yet he always found her company even more enchanting, so one night he offered to give her an allowance equal to her income at the club, and to set her up in her own suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel where he lived, if she would quit dancing and be his escort. She could finish school and pursue her acting career; he just wanted her company. This was more than acceptable to Kathryn--a free ride, security, a chance to concentrate on real acting--but what to tell the folks back home? She eventually worked it out; she'd keep her school mailing address until she graduated, then would professedly get a series of advances for parts in non-existent films which would ostensibly fail to be released, a typical fate for many small productions in Hollywood. That is, until a real part came along. This way she could pay her folks back, relating a measure of success to justify the sacrifices they had made, all the time working towards her true goal. However, as the years slipped by, and real parts weren't forthcoming while Leon's money and gifts continued to flow, Kathryn saw her true goal receding into the background. Life became one junket, one cruise, one trip abroad after another. Unearned wealth and the beguiling security it brings is a drug, as potent and addictive as any narcotic. The March-December couple went to the best restaurants, had the best seats at SRO shows, wore the best clothes and jewelry. For ten years she lived the high life, celibate but lacking in nothing else, except perhaps self-esteem. Then the money ran out; Leon had lived longer than he had calculated. Savings evaporated, the furs and other gifts migrated one-byone to the pawnshops for maintenance money. The Beverly Hills Hotel, out of tradition and some measure of mercy, allowed them to keep one, smaller, suite. This went on for a year, when Leon's calculations caught up with him.

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Kathryn had buried her benefactor this time last year. It was a sad thing, as few attended the services. He left her a small endowment, but his derelict son litigated and won most of it. The Hotel no longer could justify her rooms and gently evicted her. Now here she was, renting a garage apartment in Studio City, living her fourth life. Cybersex had been around since the beginning of www.anydamnedthing.com. Likely even the early ARPA netizans were surreptitiously sending lurid stories and innuendos to each other at 300 baud back in the '70s. GUI technology enhanced the low-bandwidth fantasies but still fell short. Static pictures, stop-motion video, and onehand typing didn't create exactly the greatest erotic experience, but any sex was better than no sex at all. Around the turn of the century some clever souls had designed peripherals to expand the interactivity between cybersexual partners. These IEEE add-ons lessened the need for, shall we say, self-actuation? However, only the most imaginative (or lonely) computer user saw this as an adequate substitute for coitus. By the time of Leon's death the total immersion capabilities of the Net, coupled with improved peripherals, had made NetSex, as it was now called, a passable experience. As with all things, affluence brings more options. Of course, the world's oldest profession was still extraordinarily profitable, but there were those who desired total anonymity, and could afford it. For them, at the price of a boat or other recreational vehicle, there was Body Double. Back in the day inflatable vinyl sex dolls had been available to the average Joe or occasional Josephine for half a week's salary; these provided a barely adequate illusion of intimacy and the surrogate begged for improvement. Anatomically correct life dolls were invented in the '90s, these costing about a month's salary. Decades of intense research and modern innovations matured the life doll considerably; not only did the new Body Double mimic the features, the "look and feel" of a real human, it contained a series of motors, pumps, and actuators in key places that could be remotely controlled, from across the room or across the Net. And it was biologically inert and completely washable. But most importantly, not only did the doll have a degree of autometry, it produced telemetry for the remote controller. NetSex had come into the twenty-first century. For a considerable amount of money the lonely netizan with his or her Body Double could logon to a virtual brothel where a virtual prostitute (euphemistically called an Ecstasy Guide) would don a body suit with the appropriate forcefeedback controllers that read the Body Double's telemetry. Here was finally, as the old song went, sex without touching. Very expensive, but sex at any price was better than no sex at all. Being such a guide is what Kathryn found herself doing, at age thirty-one with a fine arts degree but no money and no prospects. She

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found this position through her landlord in Studio City, another USC film school grad now working as a fish salesman at the Farmer's Market. The company was called Exxxtasy VR (EVR) and the job was advertised to her as a sterile, dispassionate experience; she would just be working a puppet, and, desperate as she was, this didn't seem too bad, at first. Kathryn could work from home, renting (with an option to buy) the force-feedback body suit, and taking her clients from the EVR site. She never met her clients in the flesh, so to speak, but she saw them, or rather their avatars, through her VR gear in cyberspace. Her appearance to the client was never her real self; it was an image either provided by the client (which for privacy's sake she was not allowed to download) or from the company's library of celebrity and generic models. And her POV could be from the Body Double or that of the evening's persona. Interestingly, these fantasies had her drawing from her theatre arts degree, and although the plots were pretty much the same, Kathryn discovered that her images were the ultimate make-up for whatever role she was playing. She could be old, young, any race or body type, unknown or famous; she even played several men. Once an especially eccentric female client had a custom built Body Double at enormous expense, and Kathryn was fitted for a special feedback suit; that time, in an historical reenactment, she played a large horse. Although she was paid quite well, almost two months of regular wages, the experience was too unnerving for her to repeat. After a year of working for EVR she had gotten herself completely out of debt, put away a nice sum of cash, and had resumed sending her mother some money every month. Her father had died suddenly several years before Leon and she still missed him terribly. The loss of the two older men in her life had had a lasting effect on Kathryn and was in part responsible for her acceptance of a job where she had a measure of control, which she did as an Exxxtasy guide. However, she was tiring of the unvarying roles. Moreover, she was beginning to feel weighed down by her clients. The job had been advertised as dispassionate and sterile, but week after week she was interacting with lonely people, men mostly, who had no one to talk to, no one to share a life with. You can't be human and be completely detached, completely unaffected by the constant parade of lifeless avatars. So with a tidy nest egg she decided to take some time off. She gave notice to EVR, which they sadly accepted; her training as an actress had made Kathryn a real moneymaker for them. Her boss made it clear that her job would always be there for her. Contrary to the popular opinion that dealers in the virtual sex trade were hard-nosed thugs and losers, her managers at EVR were genuinely sorry to see her go. They gave her a lavish party, a healthy parting bonus, and many hugs in the week before

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her extended vacation. On her last day she was treated to a sumptuous lunch at an exclusive Arabian restaurant in Hollywood. Kathryn still had one more client later on, but after that she was free. Late that night she donned her feedback suit for one last session, one last lonely man. Tonight she was playing a youngish Asian girl, a girl who hadn't grown up on an American diet, so she was pretty but had the historically thin, almost prepubescent, Asian figure. Kathryn had been practicing her giggle and her shy, deferential voice since lunch; the VR would take care of the accent and could even translate on demand. Typically the clients who requested this image were intelligent but unconfident men who needed to feel the control that they normally lack in dealings with women. Sad to say tonight’s image was a popular model. To them the courteous Asian lady was someone they could dominate with no fear of resistance or contradiction. They were not rough but clumsy from lack of experience. Sometimes all they wanted was to have a woman to talk to and to hold onto; in a way they were the most pathetic of all her customers and affected her the most. Tonight she was playing out a scenario where the client, another LA resident, would find her sitting alone in a city park, as lonely as he was in reality, and at first glance would be completely taken with him. The illusion of animal magnetism figured prominently in this fantasy. Kathryn powered up the feedback unit for her last foray, until the money ran out at least, and found herself in a bright tropical park near a pond, tall buildings visible over the trees. There were a few other people around, but they were window dressing--tonight's client requested a one-on-one experience. He had not yet entered the virtual space. She was dressed in a traditional Chinese business suit, long skirt, heels, wearing sunglasses. Although the Body Double was not ambulatory the simulation allowed for the illusion of mobility in the space; once physical contact was required her movements were constrained by the capabilities of the simulacrum. When, after waiting for a few minutes, her client didn't show, she decided to move around virtual park a bit; perhaps he was sitting in another area. This simulation is really good, she thought to herself. She could almost feel the heat of the early morning sun on her face, and suddenly, amazingly, she began to perspire! The power of suggestion was getting the best of her. And was that cut grass she smelled? Too much! Kathryn had heard of the self-hypnotic trance some netizans fell into; to be safe she decided to return to her original position, lest the client get annoyed in her absence. Besides, this last assignment was getting too real, and she needed to re-establish command of the VR. Much to her surprise retracing her steps didn't return her to the bench. Some kind of bug in the interface? she thought. Concerned, she

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attempted to remove the headset she was wearing back in her room, and felt a wave of panic when she found all she managed to do was to remove her virtual sunglasses. The Sun was blinding! This shouldn't happen--the program should compensate for the simulated luminosity change through the ocular interface. Frantically she clawed at what she assumed was the feedback suit, only to find she was merely wrinkling her silk business jacket. Was this last client some kind of code cracker who had hacked the simulation to get at her? Why? She had no enemies. Then, panic; Kathryn had heard about working girls in the real world who get hired by sickos; was this a virtual equivalent? She looked around for some clue, but found no one else in the space, not even the window dressing. She chose to take the unfamiliar path regardless of where it led. Perhaps the man responsible was somewhere hidden, guiding her to him. Determined not to give in to fear--what physical harm could come to her in virtual space?--she walked briskly around to some stairs that she ascended to find a young Indian girl fast asleep under a Banyan tree.

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Chapter 6 It was on that late September evening that Bugger nearly emasculated James. He was sitting on his owner's lap--both were snoozing in the hammock on the front porch--when something startled the cat and he leapt up with a hiss. Fortunately Bugger was a thoughtful kitty and didn't land back down on James with his claws out. The human, deep in a dream, awoke in total disorientation. His first reaction was alarm that rapidly faded to anger at the cat for the early rousing. Quickly though he perceived what had turned Bugger into a projectile. Standing over him was the silhouette of a woman, backlit by the waning daylight. She was dark-skinned so all that he could make out was a Cheshire Cat smile of perfect teeth. She had been reaching out toward him but was drawing back as Bugger shot off. James reached over and turned on the porch light. As his eyes adjusted to the weak glow from the yellow buglight he saw that the beauty of this creature was phenomenal. Tall, exotic, shapely, with the perfect face of a DaVinci, crowned by a mane of long black hair, she spoke in a sexy contralto. "Good evening James, Bugger" said the woman, bending down to pet the cat whose curiosity had bested his fear. "My name in Natalie, and I'm so sorry to have startled you." James was at a loss. Nobody ever came out this way; he had not had a visitor for years, much less a woman who looked like she stepped right out of the Kama Sutra. And a woman who apparently knew him, or at least of him. "You have me at a disadvantage, Ma'am," he said. "I wasn't expecting anyone." He glanced at the unmarked custom van in his driveway. Must be electric to have driven up without a sound. Not from the school, he thought, nor a delivery or messenger service. "Not much reason for personal visits anymore, what with VR conference calls and the like." The woman's smile faded a bit, and James knew he had inserted his foot deep into his mouth. "Ah, but I'm pleased and honored that you drove all the way out here just to see me in person. What can I do for you? May I get you something?" Natalie's eyes twinkled knowingly. She had an intrinsic sense of how small changes in her countenance could work large changes on a male in attendance. "Please, I would like to sit," she said, looking around for a seat other than the hammock. Somewhat embarrassed by the paucity of porch furniture, James went inside and brought out two webbed lawn chairs; almost brand-new for lack of use, whereas his hammock was well worn. "As for what can you do for me, we'll talk about that after a time. I have a proposition I think you'll find of interest. First, though, tell me, how are you doing? I know you've been teaching at UVa these past ten years,

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researching, publishing, and doing the mathematics lecture circuit. Fulfilling to be sure, but I want to hear your take on this life of academia you've chosen." Odd, he thought. Why would a complete stranger want to know how I’m doing? He would have remembered any encounter with this stunningly attractive woman, but his memory called up nothing. Yet there was something about the cadence of her speech, her choice of words, that rendered her less a stranger and more like a long-lost relative whom he had just met at a reunion. The evening had quickly decayed into night, and out at James' house the darkness was pretty imposing. There in the 40W yellow light he opened up to this woman with more candor and comfort than he would have anticipated. He spoke of the sad state of education, the dwindling numbers of students who would or could master anything beyond the trivial, and the growing boredom he felt with academia. Natalie listened closely, genuinely interested in his present emotional and intellectual state. At a natural pause in his monologue he got up at lit some Tiki Torches stuck in the ground around his front porch. Incongruous in the Virginia hills, they were somehow fitting for a conversation with this exotic woman. James never mentioned his fantasy that someday a woman would walk up his driveway and like him for his mind, and he dared not believe that Natalie was that woman. In that language of the unspoken, his solo status was presented and discussed without ever putting words to the feelings. Natalie knew these things, the way a parent knows when a child is troubled by something unvoiced. She did not pry, however, and presently James ended his monologue. An hour had passed, much to his amazement. Natalie stood up and stretched, every contour and curve accentuated by her extensions. James tried not to notice too much, but nothing Natalie did was without forethought of its consequences. This was not an invitation; it was a prelude to her proposal. She sat down. "Well, James, forgive me for being bold, but I think you could use a change. A real change. Now, I happen to know the Chancellor at UVa. We go way back." (James didn't know how this young woman and the senior Chancellor could go back any more than a few years.) "If I could arrange for him to grant you a sabbatical without all that annoying paperwork, would you be interested in a different kind of research project? Something of vital importance, not just academic curiosity?" "What kind of research?" "That, I'm afraid, it difficult to explain quickly. I'm giving a talk to the other prospective members of our team shortly. Besides, I'm getting hungry. If you wouldn't mind coming with me for a while...?"

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They were many miles from any place a scientific research team might meet. The school was the closest place, and at this late hour it, and all of Charlottesville, would be closed. Natalie sensed his puzzlement. "It will be a virtual meeting" she said, without waiting for his confirmation, "Here, put this on." She produced a compact VR headset from no place James could see. He looked through the transparent eyescreen at Natalie; she was pointing a remote control at her van, which had started to hum. There, halfway up the driveway in front of the van, a bright rainbow-hued light was growing, apparently out of nowhere. Stage lights without a stage. James could see an ocean scene coalescing in the center of the light. Limited in VR experience to conference calls, he was fascinated by this apparition, and he realized he was about to be led by his curiosity and this beautiful, persuasive, confident woman to someplace very interesting. "Come on James. Time is shorter than you think."

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Chapter 7 The separation between me and my avatar is blurring, thought Kathryn as she stood over the sleeping girl in Kowloon Park. She had been winded by the climb up to this vantage point, her feet hurt from the high heels she was allegedly wearing, and she was still perspiring under the increasingly hot sun and humid air. This can't be happening; I have been on over a hundred calls for EVR and I've never broken a sweat, never been sore, and always been able to shut the system down. Something is terribly wrong, she knew, and she was beginning to get worried. She looked down at the pretty, slender Indian girl: just a kid. The girl didn't have that pixelized image that the window dressing has; maybe someone else is in here with me. Kathryn decided to wake her with a gentle shake of her shoulders. The girl started and sat up quickly but relaxed when she saw the young Asian woman in the smart business suit. "Sorry I startle you, but there doesn't seem to be anyone else in here already," said Kathryn in English with her Cantonese accent still activated. Somehow this was more annoying than the strange body she was apparently wearing. "That's OK ma'am. I'm glad someone else is here. The park seemed deserted and I was getting nervous. I wonder how long I've been asleep; do you know what time it is? Oh, sorry, my name is Sareena Pradashmatra." "Please to meet you, Sareena. My name is Kathryn Merrill. I don't know what time it is in here. I plugged around 11PM, LA time already." Damn that accent! "I'm sorry my English is too no good--the accent algorithm is in lock." "What do you mean, accent algorithm? This can't be a virtual space--I turned off my rig and came out here hours ago." Kathryn was mildly stunned by what this child was saying. Further weirdness on top of her already strange odyssey. On an impulse she reached out and gently touched the child. She was warm from the sun, and smelled a bit of juvenile sweat. How could this be happening to her? She was a 30-something white woman who was supposed to be meeting her last client for some NetSex. The locale was his choosing; could it be that was he pretending to be the little Indian girl? It wouldn't be the first time some guy's alter ego was manifested this way. Was some weird fantasy of his? He'd have to be one hell of an engineer to alter her feedback to this extent. Every human sensory input was fully functional; no suit could do this, she was sure of that. And she had no way of turning the telemetry off. She needed a way of testing this girl apparition. On the off chance that she really was a young teenager, Kathryn didn't want to reveal her

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occupation to her; it just wouldn't be appropriate. On the other hand, any hacker this good would be able to foil most tests. The laws of physics didn't necessarily have to hold, and apparently all the senses could be fooled. What else is there? Some way to stress the telemetry? Kathryn knew that the data carrying capabilities of the Net weren't infinite. The bandwidth requirements for smooth motion, virtual scenery, and 3D sound were enormous, not counting this additional telemetry. Even if some hacker had managed to fool her body into thinking she really was an Asian woman in a city park, if she pushed the system, maybe she'd see a flicker in the background or hear a stutter in the audio. Running ought to do it, she thought. Rapidly changing scenery, plus the simulation of her panting, heart pounding and sweating should push the pipe to the limit, and something would give. She took off her high-heels and handed them to the incredulous teen-ager, "please hold these please, I must try something," and Kathryn took off running as best she could in the business suit. She ran back down the stairs she had ascended minutes ago and found herself on a broad street. This was a jolt as she hadn't seen been on any street earlier. No matter, she ran along the sidewalk down a slight incline, all the time observing the scenery up close and in the distance. The park was on her right, and shops were across the street. There were a few people out and about, and a few gave her a quizzical look, but nobody said anything. More importantly, nobody flickered. She brushed against a man who was a solid as she. When a path back into the park came up she took in and ran down and around a small knoll and, exhausted by the heat and the exertion, she almost ran into Sareena who was looking the other way down the stairs Kathryn had just used. "ooooofff," grunted Kathryn as she bumped into the Indian girl and collapsed onto the grass under the Banyan tree. "Where did you go?" asked Sareena, "I lost sight of you as you ran around that corner down there. Kathryn was soaked with perspiration and heaving to catch her breath. "I...came...to a....street....Ran down...don't understand...how I get up here already." Her little experiment had failed to prove that some hacker had taken control of her feedback suit and had only served to make her sweaty, more frustrated, and a little more scared. This result meant either a) someone had such complete control over the situation, such advanced technology, that this virtual space was indistinguishable from real space or b) she somehow had become a young Asian woman. Either possibility was just too surreal. "There is a simple explanation," said a familiar sounding voice. "You two are in a Mobius Space which loops from real to virtual space."

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Sareena turned to face the attractive blond American woman who had just spoken. Kathryn just stared in shock. The blond woman was her, or at least the body she thought was hers. The original Kathryn Merrill. She was still too winded and too dumbfounded to speak, but Sareena knew no better, so she asked, "A Mobius Space? Like a four-dimensional manifold? I saw an article about that on the net, but I didn't understand the mathematics." "That's understandable. It involves the Sestini conjecture based on Navell's super-valued probability theorem. I have a tough time with it myself. But the physics are workable, and it has as much to do with evolution as with any mathematics. Both of you have unconsciously taken the first steps into the Greater World, a hint of evolutionary changes to come." The Kathryn body looked at Asian Kathryn. "Where are my manners? Please call me Jamie. And I'm sorry about shocking you this way Kathryn. I thought a familiar face would be comforting. I've never been a real people person, and I've miscalculated. But it was necessary to remind you of who you are." The blond woman shook herself and suddenly became someone else. Still a pretty young woman, but taller, about 5'10", long brown hair, curvy but not voluptuous, of Northern European extraction and dressed in a white peasant blouse, jeans, and clunky hiking boots. Now it was Sareena's turn to be surprised. "And I apologize now shocking you, my young Indian friend. Now if you will permit me, I'll lead you out of this loop to meet some other confused but very interesting people. It's quite important that you attend." With that a door opened in the middle of the path and Jamie stepped through beckoning the now thoroughly confused two young women.

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Chapter 8 Jamie preceded Sareena and Kathryn through the door into a small restaurant at the end of a pier. It was early morning on the ocean, Pacific judging from where the Sun was rising. Big Band music played softly in the background. The restaurant, a diner really, was quiet with only a single waitress greeting and seating them in a large booth with two others, a young black man wearing biking-leathers and a middle-aged but youthful-appearing white man, casually dressed. Kathryn felt a mild tingle as she crossed the threshold into the diner. At first she thought it was too much air-conditioning after her heated condition, but then joyously realized that she was her old self again, not the Asian business woman. Her relief was visible to the group. Jamie sat at the head of the booth on a chair turned around, leaning on the back in a masculine fashion. She looked at the two men. "Gentlemen, I'm pleased to introduce Kathryn and Sareena. Ladies, this is Billy and over here, James. Nathan and Natalie won't be joining us, at least not in the flesh. My name is Jamie and the truth is, I am their flesh. Kathryn can explain." She turned to look at the now-blonde woman. "Who me? No, sorry, I can't really. I just spent the last few hours as someone else, and I'm more confused that I can say. But I'm glad to be me again." Above James a light bulb flashed on. "Oh, I get it. You, Jamie, are also Natalie and someone named Nathan. Now the question is, is this the real you? Not that I believe any of this is really happening.” Is it always like this in NetSpace? he thought. "Bingo! And yes, this is me now, and it is happening," said Jamie. She looked at James with a curious affection. Not any kind of sexual attraction; more like an aunt, though she was much too young to be a sibling to either of his parents. But she did look vaguely familiar--a picture he had seen at his uncle's house? "Just a bit of legerdemain--I like to have a little fun too you know--although Kathryn was truly concerned about her condition. I had little to do with it actually. She was an Asian woman in a Kowloon park; she had unconsciously fit herself to the situation. I just happened by to invite her and Sareena here, and the change of venue to here allowed her the freedom to reclaim her old self." The more Jamie talked, the more incredulously the four others looked at her. "Now is the time for explanations I think. Give me some time, the story is as convoluted as Mobius Space itself." She leaned back and fell into a well-practiced lecture mode, squelching the group’s curiosity at her use of the term Mobius Space. "Every species evolves in fits and starts. There is no great internal consensus that says 'OK evolve'. Some traits change slowly, like the 3%

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loss in dentition humans undergo every ten centuries, across almost the whole population. On the other hand, certain extreme changes can occur quickly in a very small fraction of the population. Of course, if these mutations are detrimental the change stops before the next generation. But if the alteration proves to be beneficial, leaving the individual more capable of adapting to its environment, well, things can take off." The four at the table looked at each other as their host paused. The last thing any of them had expected was a lecture on genetics and evolution. James had a rudimentary knowledge of Mendelian probabilities, but beyond that he and the others were lost. Jamie sensed this and started on a different tack. "Do you remember from your history lessons the attitude people had in the early scientific-industrial revolution? The disbelief of what even "learned" men saw when looked through Galileo's telescope? The Catholic Church burning Giordano Bruno at the stake for adhering to a heliocentric solar system model? Remember learning about the Luddites destroying machinery? Science and technology were just too, too much for these people to grasp." "Remember the attitude most people had about early steam trains? 'No one can breathe at over 35 miles per hour'. It was only common sense to believe that. But then the trains ran at 40, 50, 70 miles an hour and nobody thought twice about it. Common sense had changed. 'Man was not meant to fly' but then he did at Kitty Hawk and no one denied it. Common sense had changed again. In actual fact, the nature of reality was changing." Jamie caught a deep breath, then continued as her audience listened, enraptured. "As science and technology progressed from that beach in North Carolina, from the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School, and from the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, fewer and fewer everyday people could really understand what was going on. Relativity and quantum mechanics are not products of common sense, and the mathematical abstractions that made the twentieth century work were just too sophisticated for most people. But they didn't care. Everything functioned as advertised, and the now massively increasing population contented themselves with enjoying the magic from the laboratories. Magic, yes, for 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic', to quote a famous scientist/author. What had really happened, without anyone realizing it until recently, was that mankind had turned an evolutionary corner, one that we are just beginning to comprehend." "Chaucer had his "EveryMan", and we believe he was closer to the truth than he thought, though he probably was not an EveryMan. The largest fraction of humans is indeed EveryMan and EveryWoman, unable to conceive of anything beyond common sense: no ability to think

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symbolically (save for iconic representations), no understanding beyond their own senses. Literally, they could never, regardless of any amount of study or training, get beyond the common wisdom." "Newton was the one who quantified common sense. EveryMan could feel acceleration--it made sense. EveryWoman could understand kinematics--rate multiplied by time equals distance. Sensible. With education and perseverance EveryBody could get a sense of simple mechanics. But Lorentz transformations? Probability waves? ‘How could things that make no sense at work at all’, they thought. How can time change as you go faster? How can an electron go through two slits at the same time? ‘Just some fool scientist-speak’, they concluded, not reality, not common sense." Again Jamie paused to take stock of her class. Everyone at the table was right with her. Now for the big kicker. "The truth is, you can't travel at 35 miles per hour and live. You would suffocate." The table stared at her for a beat, then broke up in nervous chuckles. "You can't have hijacked us to your virtual restaurant..." started Billy, then stopped. He had been sipping coffee, real coffee. His MIVI interface couldn't do that. Now he understood what Sareena and Kathryn had just gone through. The laughter died down. "Until someone conceived of it, travel at 35mph was impossible. Until someone conceived of it, heavier-then-air flight was impossible. Until someone conceived of it, relativity, quantum gravity, string theory were all impossible. The conception erased the impossibility and created the possibility." "Ayn Rand and the objectivists were correct, to a point. There is a Real World out there, separate from the senses and uniform in properties laid down by Newton. But there is a Greater World that exists because a tiny fraction of humanity can conceive of it. Have you ever wondered why, when a scientist or scientific team devises some apparatus to prove a particular notion, that the apparatus detects evidence of that notion? Think of quarks..." "Wait," cried Kathryn, "What the hell--sorry-- what is a quark?" "It is simply a fundamental piece of matter. Murray Gel-Mann envisioned everything--protons, neutrons, electrons, everything-- as being made up of six quarks, each of which came in three colors. The names and colors are just nicknames, not real indications of any quality. The details aren't important now." "When they built accelerators to search for quarks, guess what they found? When they built WIMP detectors--" more chuckles from Sareena, Billy and Kathryn, relaxed chuckles this time, "--they found them. Neutrino detectors? Yep, found those too."

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"There have been, we guess, people since the last Ice Age who could have conceived of these things, but not many. A small fraction of the population had manifested that drastic evolutionary change I talked about earlier, and the percentage who had this mutation remained fairly constant over the millennia. Because human numbers remained small until the beginning of the last century, advanced and uncommon sense ideas were not, could not be part of reality. But since 1900 our world population has grown drastically, and that small fraction came to represent large numbers. Numbers sufficient to support a Greater World, as we call it. Now when a scientific team looks for a particle or force it is found because they create it by conceiving of its existence!" "Excuse me," Sareena said, raising her hand. Everyone smiled, especially James, who was sitting next to her. She had been quiet all during Jamie's lecture; she was, after all, a young teenager sitting in on an adult discussion. She paused, looking for approval from the others, found it, and asked, "You mean it's like in Peter Pan, when you just have to believe in Tinkerbell and she'll live?" "A very astute observation Sareena," said Jamie, "but it's more than that. Most people believe the laser guidance system on their car will work, but they can't understand why it works. Metastable states of electrons in a Helium-Neon mixture of gases is quite beyond them. No, lasers work, tunnel diodes work, gravitational lensing works because there are now enough people who do understand how they work, and their understanding changes reality. The first clue that something extraordinary was happening was that common sense changed rapidly in the 19th century and left the realm of mass comprehension in the 20th. Now in the 21st there is a Greater World of which the common sense reality of the Real World is a subset." Jamie again inhaled deeply. "Hey, I’m still getting used to the idea myself. How are you all doing?" Sareena sat quietly, pressed against the red vinyl cushions of the booth. She was still a bit shy in this company of adults and had spent most of the time listening and looking at James, who was now lost in thought. Jamie's revelation was something he had never considered, but given the data, his recent bizarre experiences, and the consistency of her reasoning she could very well be correct. It implied endless possibilities, given enough people who could envision those possibilities. Which, of course, meant huge probabilities, huge numbers, super-valued numbers! Kathryn too was silent, but for a different reason. All her life he had been involved with theatre arts. True, her years with Leon were not artistically productive, but recently she had returned to it, after a fashion. However, she had never been exposed to such radical ideas, never had any serious training in any science at all. Why was she here with these obviously technically minded people?

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Billy was getting impatient, typical of his nature. He sensed a punchline to this story, a plot twist, something, and he hated to wait. "All right Jamie, what you're sayin' makes some sense in a wild kinda way. What else? Where is all this leading? And what is Mobius Space?" Jamie got up and stretched, motioning to the waitress for another soda. She had not joined the other adults in their coffee fix. "Later on the Mobius lecture. Where is this all leading? Right now, the Greater World is a non-contiguous patchwork; a bit of quantum gravity here, some molecular biophysics there. The Mentors—that’s what we’ll call those who are pushing this world forward--aren't yet in sufficient numbers to unify the patches. Even though world populations are growing rapidly, dysgenesis is taking its toll. For every potential Mentor child EveryMan and EveryWoman have four offspring. But soon, perhaps within fifty years, there will be enough of us to unite the patches into a quilt of greater reality. From then on there will be two distinct branches of the human tree." "There is precedent for multiple branches of humanity stemming from intellectual differences. Cro-Magnon out of Africa, by virtue of his use of body ornamentation, displayed the superior cognitive ability of expressing abstract ideas--tribal stature, for example--through symbolism. Neanderthals mimicked this behavior but apparently didn't grasp the meanings of the necklaces and bracelets he saw Cro-Magnon wear. While most evolutionary change occurs because of environmental factors, in this case the advantage of superior cognitive powers allowed the African branch to adapt to those changes, to survive the Ice Ages, whereas Neanderthal retreated and died out." "There is no evidence of violent competition between those ancient humans, and while the potential for social conflict in our future is there, we anticipate little difficulty. Once we attain those numbers, that critical mass, we can maintain, with little effort, the Real World for our cousins on the other evolutionary branch while we ourselves move out into the Greater World. We will be able to provide for their needs and protect them from catastrophes, either external in origin or self-inflicted." She looked out the restaurant window at the sea beyond. Then, almost to herself, she said, "But we may not have the time."

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Chapter 9 The group waited quietly in anticipation of Jamie's next words. Her voice had grown less professorial in the last few minutes and more worried. She stood up and paced back and forth for maybe a minute. Finally she stopped before her guests. "Perhaps you caught wind of a small story the popular news has been misinforming us of in the past month. Something to do with a retired astronomer discovering a potential impactor on the Moon within a year. Ever since the EveryMan population defunded Skywatch the impactor census program has proceeded mostly in the nonprofessional sector; therefore the popular press does not treat the threat seriously. But a few who understand the consequences have examined the data, and it is the end of the Moon, which, of course, is the end of life on Earth." "In the vast majority of cases the greater gravitational well of the parent planet saves its satellites from most major impacts. The record shows that the Earth has been hit twenty times as much as the Moon. And given the present age and state of the Solar System the chances of a Moondestroyer are very slim. But slim doesn't mean zero, and in about eleven months our satellite will cease to exist." "Since the Moon has practically no iron core, and because of it composition, it has less mass and therefore much gravitational integrity than Earth. The object that will shatter the Moon is a so-far nameless NiFe asteroid about 50km along its major axis. Its trajectory is such that it will blast most of the material away from us, although there will be some secondary impacts on Earth that will cause regional, not global, devastation." So much of this new subject was over their heads, except for James who had hung around with the Physicists at UVa. None of them were trained in astrophysics or celestial mechanics. Billy and Sareena had a vague idea about these concepts, but Kathryn was completely lost. "The real damage will come from future instability of the Earth's rotational axis. The added energy and change of angular momentum in the Earth-Moon system, and the loss of the gyroscopic function of our satellite will cause our planet to precess wildly. Now..." Kathryn had to interrupt. "I'm sorry, but I'm not a scientist like you obviously are. I haven't a clue as to what you're talking about. And what any of us here can do about it." Jamie paused in a smile. "I'm sorry, let me back up. Simply put, like a top, the Earth spins on its axis. It's a stable spin with only the smallest amount of wobble. This stability is provided by the Moon, whose gravity tugs just enough to keep the wobbling to a minimum. We tilt

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slightly more toward the Sun then gradually tilt away over a twenty-five thousand year period. And the change in tilt is only about one degree." "Tilting toward the Sun warms us a little; tilting away cools us. Even this small tilt, coupled with other factors, is enough to bring on iceages alternating with global warming. We're in the warming phase now; the last ice-age was about 12,000 years ago. But even these climatic variations are mild enough and occur over such long periods of time that we can adapt." "Now take the Moon out of the picture. Our tilt will become erratic, varying as much as 90 degrees or more, and occurring aperiodically, over several hundred to several thousand years. Think what this means! Severe ice-ages which freeze everything down to the tropics can occur within several human generations. Follow this will be massive warming wherein the polar caps completely melt. The variation in stress on tectonic plate boundaries from the rapid water-mass displacement will cause huge increases in volcanism and seismic activity. The..." "Whoa! You're getting technical again. In English please, what can we do about it?" Jamie stood patiently for a moment, thinking, staring at nothing. Then, even more seriously than before, "Kathryn, it means that most of the 10 billion people on Earth will die. The Mentors' numbers will never reach critical mass, populations will become so small, and climate so unpredictable, that humans as a species will die out, and it is unlikely that any other thinking species will evolve." "Now, what can we do about this? As I said, evolving naturally Mentors will not have sufficient numbers to close the gaps between our Greater World patches and affect local space, i.e. the Earth-Moon system, to avert this catastrophe. Therefore, this group, you four and I, as well as others trying different tacts such as genetic manipulation, are attempting to force the issue, to break through, as it were, to the Greater World. We think this team can do it with advanced cyberspace techniques." "Wait a minute," said Billy, seeing an obvious flaw in this argument. "Cyberspace can't affect anything. All this VR stuff is just information, not any sort of physical manipulation. It'd be like expecting pictures of a tornado on the TV to blow things around in your living room." "True enough Billy. True enough.” Jamie smiled a Cheshire Cat smile. “All the research we want you to do will serve as nothing more than a foil for your intellect. Remember, the Greater World comes from the ability to conceive it, not by actually doing anything. The devices we use are metaphors for what our minds actually do. We conceived of metastable states in a HeNe mix, then merely let the Laser take advantage of this

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conception. If we can manipulate a virtual space we will then be able to manipulate real space. Or so we think." The actress started to object that she was no scientist, but Jamie held up her hand. "You yourself, Kathryn, have taken a fundamental step. You merged with your avatar back there in that virtual space. The rest of you still have a foot, so to speak, back in the real world. Sareena, your perception of cyberspace is identical to the real world, but you haven't been able to extend that perception to manipulation. Billy, you know you're still on that beach in Oregon, and James, you're such a newbie that this must seem more like a conference call." "You're right," the mathematician answered, "Although I can't deny the taste of this coffee, I have no innate sense of what happened to the girls. So why am I here?" "Your mathematics are and will be the foundation of what it will take to make that leap into the greater world. Remember that mathematics is just the most advanced kind of rational symbolism, and your ideas incorporate a huge advance in symbolics. But all of you are of the evolving Mentor branch of the human tree. Mentors can come from any creative background. There is a preponderance of Mentor scientists only because the problem-solving inclinations of most Mentors make science more attractive than, say, sculpture. Or drama, Kathryn." Silence fell. By now the team had been long in faux Mobius Space, from an hour for James to half a day for Billy and Kathryn. No matter how wonderful the simulation of breakfast was, the team's real bodies would be crying out for attention soon, for food and other necessities. Jamie explained this to them. “It’s why, despite my clever hijacking of your current VR excursions, except for you James, I can’t do this by myself. I alone cannot create a large enough ‘splash’, so to speak. I need you to jump in with me.” "Folks, I need a commitment. Billy, James, I think we've already reached an agreement." At this the engineer looked down tellingly, which Jamie noticed but moved on. "Now I need to get your thoughts ladies. Kathryn, I know that you're about to take some time to collect yourself. Would you please work with us? We have plenty of resources--technical, financial--to support you, all of you. And we can find others to replace you if you don't want to join. That goes for any of you. No bad feelings, really." Kathryn was thinking, what have I got to loose? Maybe a fifth life will be the charm. "OK, I'm in, for whatever that's worth." Jamie shook Kathryn's hand. "It's worth more than you can know. You four were asked because we see you working as a team very efficiently. You're strong individualists who will cooperate with little

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friction. Later I'll tell you how I know that, if you haven’t already figured it out by the time we’ve succeeded." Turning to the last member, the teenager, Jamie said, "This will be hardest on you. You might think that you're just a kid, but you're much more. We're gonna have to ask you to grow up fast. I think you can do it--I know you don't hang with the other kids very much. And I also know that we adults will take to you quickly, and treat you as an equal. That was one of the qualities we looked at when we chose Billy, Kathryn, and James." Sareena, looked at the mathematician sitting next to her. He seemed like a really nice guy, and she believed what Jamie had said about him and about the rest. "What do I tell my parents and my friends?" Jamie turned solemn. "You must keep quiet about this. Chances are that nobody would believe any of you if you leaked this story. Anyway, the work can be started remotely, so you don't have to leave home just yet. Eventually we’ll all have to relocate close together for a short while, but once you can start manipulating a Mobius Space by yourself, you'll be able to meet at our facility anytime, and be home for dinner. Eventually, even time won't be a problem. However, we must work together to that point." Sareena thought to herself, this sounds cool! Working on a secret project with grownup experts? Something hidden even from my parents? It was like an adolescent adventure novel to her. All that exhaustion she felt back in the park was gone. "Sure! I'll join your team. When do we start?" "First, you all go home and rest. This has been a full day for some of you. Billy's been up all night and it's midday for him. It's midday for Sareena too, and late at night for James and Kathryn. Don't get upset about the fact that it can't be noon ten time zones apart. Just one of those things you'll learn about Mobius Space. I'll be in contact with you individually so we can get things set up." And with that Jamie paid their bill (much to the confusion of her guests), and as each walked out the door of the diner they found themselves back where they had started this journey.

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PART II

Chapter 10 Ladders are funny things, thought Ernie Martirez. Climbing them in real life is never as easy as seems. Oh, he wasn’t thinking about painting his house, not that kind of ladder. He had plans to get to the top, nonetheless. And he had to make a climb; his boss, Congressman Doltman of New York, was his ladder. Ernie, twenty-something with an attractive enough face, welltanned and clean-shaven, his medium build clothed in stylish business suit, had been working for the Representative for only a few months since leaving the University of Miami (still known as Sunshine U) with his degree in Political Science. Hmmf, he thought, ain't no science in politics. Can't be. Ernie hated science but loved politics. It was the perfect career for a fawning sycophant. His Uncle Fred had been friends with Doltman since prison (the former in for spousal abuse, the latter for embezzlement) years ago and had secured a staff position for Ernie in his Junior year. And what a great position! Doltman was an outspoken figure in the minority Republicratic party. Minority party, yes, but one that resonated with statists across the country, statists who deeply resented the loss of prestige and power when those damned Liberty Party members gave the country back to its responsible citizens. Collectivists, loud and large in numbers, were on a mission to reinstitute the nanny state of the twentieth century, but in opposing the current prosperity of personal freedom Republicrats needed an issue so compelling yet ambiguous that any semblance of reason in the general population could be clouded by FUD: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Ernie saw immediately that locating such an issue for his boss would catapult him to center stage politically. First Doltman becomes the hero of his party, then in a few years becomes Senator Doltman. If the issue is so good that Republicrats regain power, and if they can buy that judge who presided at the embezzlement trial, make her reverse her decision, can a President Doltman be far behind? Just think of the gratitude he'd be entitled to from his boss, the favors he'd be owed, and where this would lead him! But what issue would work? It had to be something that could be easily explained to the public, yet an issue that could be effortlessly clouded by jargon. It had to be down-home patriotic yet topical. It had to be expensive so jobs and favors (read: pork) would flow without question. Something vital, close to home, life or death even. Something that the average citizen wouldn't naturally understand so that his party couldn't be

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caught in a lie. Maybe his Uncle Al could think of something; he was quite experienced in the art of obfuscation.

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Chapter 11 James removed the headgear as the diner by the sea faded from his mind's eye. He was no stranger to technology, having given a few seminars in virtual lecture halls. He had also used 3D topographical mapping programs to help with his research, but in none of these experiences was the line between the simulation and reality anything but distinct. This Jamie person had made that distinction questionable. He still thought of her as "person", not necessarily "woman", for he still puzzled over her confession that Natalie and some man named Nathan were also her. There was something intangibly different yet familiar about her. No matter: apply the theorem of indistinguishability and go with it. The hour was late back here in the Blue Ridge foothills; even Bugger was asleep after his evening's prowl. The mysterious van was nowhere to be seen; how had she done that? James gave up wondering, put the headset aside, and hit the sack, falling asleep almost immediately. However, the scope of all he had learned had him wide-awake at dawn's first light. He lay fighting the covers for an hour, until he gave in to his overactive brain. A stretch, a shower, comfortable clothes, a Coke and a muffin, and he was at his computer using the freeassociation/brainstorming program he relied on to organize his thoughts. The possibilities presented by Jamie's proposition of a Greater World existing by virtue of a cognoscenti gestalt were boundless. Postulate that a sufficient amount of applied mathematics understood by a sufficient number of persons breathes life into the consequences of those mathematics. The enormous consequences of directing, say, quantum tunneling would allow large amounts of matter to be repositioned without moving through the intervening space, instead of the occasional electron escaping a potential well. The infinitely small probability of all the atoms in a kilogram of iron tunneling at the same time to the same remote location, and reassembling in the same configuration could only be described by supervalued numbers and a significant advance in the use of Exalogs. This meant the implementation of Exalog statistics, a formidable task, though nothing really fundamental had to be derived. However, in the course of any research, innovations were inevitable. What he had to do was establish a boilerplate way of calculating the impossibly remote chance of a single event occurring given near unlimited degrees of freedom. Then he had to find a way of making these numbers workable so they could be hard-coded into a device. First though, James would need to know how Billy's MIVI devices worked, especially the underlying principles, so he could get some idea of the scope of the problem.

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His brainstorming program had put these ideas into what looked like a roadmap for clouds. There were black thick lines connecting the fundamentals of Exalogs, represented as blue nebulae. From these, thinner green lines fingered out to a mass of dense clouds of violet spread out across the screen. Violet signified compression techniques, and the green lines depicted a lack of clarity in their function within James' thesis. On the periphery was a circle of gray fog with nary a connector to the other clouds: in other words, the true gray area. All this told him at this early stage was that there was much work to be done. The Sun had come up and Bugger was meowing to go out. The cat had a catdoor, but he insisted that James open the human door for him. This was probably because once James was outside he took a walk in the local woods, making it safe for Bugger to explore the hollow. These walks did much to stimulate the mathematician's imagination. So he put on his shoes and a jacket, with Bugger supervising every move, and opened the door wide enough for the cat. The feline looked up at him and gave a short "mow", the flirted with the doorjamb for a minute, coyly poking his head outside, then looking back at James. "In or out, cat, make up your mind," James said uselessly. Bugger did what he wanted, as did any cat, with little regard for human prompting. This time Bugger did jump out and instantly assumed a defensive stance. Something from the woods foraging close to the house? James looked up to see, not a raccoon or deer, but a van, the van, pulling again into his driveway. Jees! No rest for the weary, he thought. I haven't even gotten the release time from school yet. Jamie parked and waved. She was still dressed as the day before, and called, "It's deja vu all over again, huh James? By the way, how come no-one calls you Jim?" "Because it inevitably devolves to 'Jimbo', and that I can't abide. You're here bright and early." She walked up to James and stood looking up at him. She was tall but he was still a reach for her eyes. "I kinda had the feeling that you would be up. I could see it in your eyes when you left my 'diner'. You were getting that look: this means that, that implies this, this leads to that. You know what I mean. I see Bugger is taking you for a walk. Mind if I join you?" James normally liked the solitude of his walks, but how could he saw no? "Sure! I don't go far, just up there." He pointed to the crest of a nearby knoll. "By the way, why that Natalie guise? "Oh, I like to play the chanteuse sometimes. It's not really my style, but I've been through a lot of changes in the last year, and, well, you gotta try new things, you know? Besides, I wanted to grab your attention. Did it work?" she said, knowing the answer.

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He gave her a sideways glance and cocked an eyebrow: his only response. After zipping his light blue jacket he made a sweeping gesture to her at the trailhead, and they picked their way along the well-worn path through James' backyard to a stand of old maple trees at the foot of the small hill. The early morning air was crisp and the Fall leaves crunched where the dew had not soaked them. The sun was still low in the East behind them as they started up the hill. Jamie asked, "How much do you know about Mobius Space?" "I've reviewed several pre-prints on the subject for the MAA, and of course know the principle of the Mobius Strip. I've tried to teach the topology of the strip to my more advanced students, but it's usually over their heads." "Well, I'm a physicist by training, not a mathematician, so I treat math loosely, like a toolbox; if some of the tools get dirty, so be it. I'll give you my operational definitions. When you consider a Mobius Strip, it's a closed surface, which exists in three dimensions though it can be mapped onto two. This requires that every co-ordinate on the surface of a single loop strip to have twenty spatial degrees of freedom, plus time, assuming you exist in three dimensions. Imagine a resident of Flatland on a Mobius Strip!" They stopped for a moment to give Bugger a chance to return from a scouting mission. James considered the utter bewilderment of the poor Flatlander and chuckled as they started on up the hill. "As you increase the loops describing the co-ordinate system becomes more complicated but eventually it repeats. There is only one destination: the beginning, the junction of the ends of the strip. This constrains the temporal dimension since no two objects can exist in the same place at the same time and the Flatlander has a consistent reality." "Now consider a Mobius Space; it must exist in at least four dimensions for a single manifold or 'loop', whatever that would be. Each loop represents fifty-six degrees of freedom, again assuming we live only in 3D, and there are not one but three outcomes for following the loop for one complete cycle. This means that there can be apparent paradoxes in time because three sets of co-ordinates exist simultaneously. The interesting thing is, unlike a 2D strip, the more loops in the space the more intersections it has with itself, and the greater the number of consistent simultaneities. And ... it ... gets better." Jamie stopped her lecture as she was getting short on breath climbing the hill. James was lost in thought, so they walked silently for a few minutes, in and out of the morning sunlight, until they came to a 'settin rock' with a view of James' property and eastward across the hollow. They decided to 'set' a spell; Bugger joined them, curling up at their feet as she continued.

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"The upper limit to the number of loops in a Mobius manifold that are non-redundant approaches 1050, within an order of magnitude or so. It is approximately the number of discreet particles in the Universe, since every mass can warp space, divided by the number of aggregates-everything from atoms to stars. And since the four spatial dimensions are orthogonal, a 3D being can choose any three at a time. Think of the permutations! Factor in those 56 degrees of freedom and the imagination of potentially millions of Mentors, well, you see you have functionally an infinite quantity of mutually inclusive realities. This is where my math breaks down, but your Exalog routines are perfectly suited." James blushed. "Thanks. I've been just considering dealing with super-valued probabilities in the abstract, but it's naturally really sketchy at this point. And I haven't begun to include the non-linear dynamical elements; that'll be a real can of worms. What I have no clue about is how this idea, even when I get a handle on it, gets put into software and hardware." "Just explain it to Sareena and she'll do the translation." "Now how in hell will I explain all this to the girl? She's bright, but Jees Jamie, she's just a kid! It took me years to come up with this. I can't possibly get a kid to understand it in a month." "Ah, but that's why I picked you and her. I don't know how you'll do it, but I know you two can do it. Don't ask me how I know this: let's just say that it will become obvious later. Being a Physicist I might teach differently than you would, but I'd present axiom and theorem as facts and skip all the derivations. I know that's what math people like to do best, but we don't have years. Besides, you can start tutoring her remotely in the basics immediately, before you get to the new stuff." A cloud of skepticism formed over James' head, as visible as any water vapor cloud. Even Bugger sensed it as he looked up at the mathematician and 'mowwwed'. The woman grinned. "Hey! I didn't say it would be easy! Take it one step at a time. You know, I'm tired of all this technical talk. Can't we talk about something else? I know you're way involved with these ideas, but I'm a little burned out." Jamie took a deep breath and stretched. "It's beautiful up here! The Fall colors, the smells, your silly cat. You got a good life, Professor Navell, a good life." James did have to crank it down a notch; his mind was on math overdrive. It's sad but true that when you live in an idyllic environment you tend to take it for granted. He had to remind himself just how nice his life was. "Yes, I've got to agree. When all you have to bitch about it that your students don't live up to your expectations, you don't have any real excuse to complain. Of course, there's that lunar impactor to worry about."

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"Now now, no technical talk!" cried Jamie, "but I guess the subject can't be totally avoided. Hmmmm. We had a nice chat when 'Natalie" visited last evening, but I want to know more about you. I know it's been less than 24 hours, but how do you feel about the project, the team, this whole thing?" If he had doubts earlier about Jamie's true gender, that question dispelled them. Not "what do you think about"; she asked "how do you feel?" A fundamentally woman's question. "Do you mean my predictions for a successful outcome, or my emotional response to a scientific theory?" She hit him playfully. "Men! You're about to embark on the most monumental intellectual adventure in the history of humankind! Doesn't it excite you, worry you, scare you? How do you feel?" He stubbornly harrumphed. "To be honest, I feel trepidation at the enormity of the task, but I mostly think about the mathematics. Though I suppose if, or hopefully when, I find a proper set of algorithms I'll feel excited." "And that's it?" "Yep, 'Fraid so. I'm not what you would call a moody person. If you were to plot my disposition over time, with the base line being zero emotion, my feelings would fluctuate nominally around a point just on the happy side of content. I rarely feel ecstatic, but I'm almost never depressed." Jamie remembered how she used to be like this, but now she was different, and visibly frustrated by this answer. She tried a different approach. "OK, what about Billy? Did you get a sense that he is a competent engineer, someone you can get along with?" "If you mean that, since I'm clearly the oldest member..." "Which you are not!" He stared at her for a moment. "Well, I was born in the last century. And if you think I have any racial baggage from the 20th Century, forget it. Most intelligent people never subscribed to that notion of pigmentation as an indicator of competence anyway. Other than that, I guess he's good. It's a gut feeling; since I have no real data." Slightly encouraged Jamie asked "What about the girls?" "Again, I have no data. The kid seems pretty mature for, what, thirteen? And Kathryn's kinda cute, but hell, I don't know. They're fine I guess. You know much more about them. I barely know their last names. By the way, I never got your last name," he said leadingly. Jamie's eyes twinkled and she grinned her Cheshire grin. "Let's just leave it at Jamie for now."

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"Well, OK, Woman of Mystery." He paused for a moment, then spoke. "I was wondering, are there any other of these Mentor people at UVa? I know a lot of bright folks there. Maybe they could help us?" "Oh, yes, definitely there are others at your school, and no, they can't help us. Well, they are evolved enough to, but I've arranged this team just so. Remember, the goal is not to build this Mobius Space MIVI device, it's just the focus our abilities. And in this case, too many cooks, you know. Four people working together is a very stable arrangement, dating back to prehistoric hunting parties. I don't count as part of the group; I'm more of a recruiter slash database for you. Oh, the technology will work, I'm pretty sure of that, given all your expertise. With a little luck, we'll get the job done. Damn! I wanted to get away from this technical stuff." It was James's turn to grin. "Sorry. Anyway, this will save the world? er, Moon?" She sighed, giving in to inertia of the conversation, "Well, no, honestly. You will make the math that Sareena will code into drivers so Billy's technology can be piloted by Kathryn. If it all works the gestalt of our group will allow first Kathryn, then the rest, to manipulate a Mobius Space. The fact that we can do this, not the actual doing, will act as a catalyst to connect us with other groups seeking to unify the currently piecemeal Greater World. It will be something like the A.C. Clarke novel Childhood's End. Did you ever read it? At some point in the future an entire generation of children evolve rapidly under the guidance of an alien race and leave their parents behind on a disintegrating Earth. Well, there aren't any aliens we know of, and we won't be leaving everyone else behind. But the problem of the Lunar Impactor will be moot." "I see, maybe. But I still need to know something about this MIVI gear and cyberspace technology, at least to satisfy my own curiosity," said James as they rose for the walk back down the hill. The sun was getting warmer now so he unzipped his jacket and slung it jauntily over his shoulder. "OK, let me fill you in on some of the theory behind cyberspace. Each coordinate in a virtual space is represented by a 3Dexel, a 3 dimensional picture element, that has a bit depth of about 16 million colors, shades, and intensities. These 3Dexels are positioned in a space limited in scale only by bandwidth. For instance, Billy was performing in a representation of the Royal Albert Hall when I contacted him. The actual hall is about 1 million cubic meters, and each cubic meter is depicted by about 900,000 3Dexels on a side. There are techniques to make the most of the bandwidth--compression, vectoring, redundancy, non-refreshing static images--but you can see that under the worst case scenario, every thirtieth of a second about 1034 bits must be addressed. MIVI funnels this data to the user, allowing control over certain audio-visual parameters of the

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space. Your, and our, job will be to add a Mobius Space probability factor for each of these bits. Ouch! Even the fattest pipe can't handle that. Exalogs to the rescue!" Bugger was busy flushing all the small wildlife from the trail before the two scientists; clearly all this human technical talk was beneath a cat. But it had sent the mathematician off to a wonderland of postulates and algorithms. Jamie sensed this and didn't talk for the rest of the trip down the hill. Not until they were walking through James' backyard toward the van did he come out of his reverie and ask her to stay for breakfast. "No thanks, dear boy. I must be off to UVa to secure your sabbatical. And keep the headset as a signing bonus!" She hugged him tightly. "It's been a real pleasure James, despite all the 'shop talk'. We never got to visit much in the past, but that will change and we'll catch up sometime." As Jamie pulled back out of the driveway he puzzled over that last remark. Never got to visit much in the past? A mysterious yet vaguely familiar woman. And what a task she had presented him! He had no idea when he had accepted the challenge. Many long walks in the woods lay ahead for Professor Navell.

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Chapter 12 Billy was striking his setup on the now bright and windy Oregon beach. He had missed the end of the Wall concert, much to his dismay, but the prospect of almost a year off his mundane job to work on this curious and clandestine project, and well-paid at that, somewhat mitigated his lost performance opportunity. He still didn't believe that weird story about a Greater World or whatever that chick was talking about, but her Nathan act, and the engineering behind that almost real dining experience were not to be taken lightly. Just like the Wall concert where he was playing with world-class musicians, this team Jamie had pulled together, and the apparent resources at her disposal, had Manhattan Project 2.0 written all over it, if it was for real. He'd checked his email and found his contract with GameChamp had been suspended for 12 months, starting immediately, with a guarantee of full employment after that time. (The guarantee was more for the company than for Billy; they needed him.) Man she works fast! Here was further evidence that Jamie was not just bullshitting him. She had said that his contribution would have to wait until the software was in place, which would have to wait until the math was in place, so Billy could spend the next two months finishing up projects at work, tying up loose ends, if he wanted. It wouldn't take nearly that long. Besides, he had a ladyfriend (actually two: one pretty, cool and calm; the other hot and wild) with whom he needed to spend some quality time. And he could get started researching and designing the necessary nanochips for an expandedcapability interface. The drivers would have to wait for Sareena. That girl; barely a teenager. The more he thought about it, the more unreal this whole project was. Twelve hours ago he was playing in a bar in Eugene; now he was taking a leave of absence from GameChamp to join a small team with two members not even proven scientists. The speed at which this alteration to his life happened spoke of a group with great stroke. Billy would have guessed that some nefarious government agency was backing all this, but the Liberty Party Revolution had brought most of the Machiavellian tendencies of the Statists to a screeching halt. So who were they, the people funding and guiding this project? Were they really a loose amalgam of beneficent brainy types in control of some awesome technology, pursuing some outrageous theory? Boy, he had some doubts, but for now, as long as the money was good, and the project was interesting and benign, he was into it. Billy packed the gear onto his bike and searched the tourist database for a local motel or B&B. There were several of the latter with rooms available, so he chose the closest, a place called Piños del Mar. He gunned the Wankel and headed back up the road that had brought him to

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this astounding turn of events. The Bed and Breakfast was only a couple of klicks away; it was a quaint three-story white frame house set back in some wind-swept trees, slightly run down but clean enough. After checking in with the proprietor, a cheerful, youngish widow named Elaine, he got a quick box lunch (even though for him it felt like dinner time) then crawled into bed and was out for sixteen hours. Billy was awakened mid-morning the next day by the discreet humming of his portable computer: incoming mail. He always had tons of messages, but the alarm was set to respond only to certain priority headers. Groggily he swore at the machine with expletives it was not programmed to respond to. He dozed for a couple of minutes until it hummed again persistently. This time he nearly yelled his favorite curse but squelched it, remembering that he might have neighbors. In defeat he called "read" and the computer obediently recited the intrusive message: "Good morning, Billy. It's Jamie. Sorry to wake you, but I'm on a tight schedule, riding herd on you four. I didn't want to pop in unannounced, but we should talk; shall we meet for lunch? I imagine you're hungry, having slept away half a day. A real lunch. No, I'm not obsessed with food, it's just a friendlier to talk over a meal, at least until we have your lab ready to go." Billy told his computer to reply to the sender (How did she get on his priority list? then Why even ask?) with a grumpy affirmative--he had stock replies saved for just such an occasion--and got an immediate answer. "OK OK, I'll pay! Jees, what a grouch! Just kidding. I'll meet you later at this great Italian place down the coast in Bandon. It's called Frantonio's. Hope you like excellent pizza. I expect you want to wake up, get clean, and check out before you head south. Meet you there, say, around 2?" He was heading south later, back home to Santa Cruz to finish up old projects and get ready for new ones, but did he ever mention that to her? For that matter, what was she doing in Western Oregon? Why not just call? Such a cute chick, but a mystery. He sent a terse confirmation back, still too grumpy to apologize for it. He'd make it up to Jamie later. For now: a shower, a shave, repacking and refueling the bike (he'd prepaid the room), and back onto the road. Billy always felt good cruising on that big motorcycle. Wind blowing in his face always seemed to blow downer thoughts away. His good night's sleep had pushed his major concerns to the background, and now that he was fully awake his ornery attitude had evaporated. He was going to have lunch with a hottie, and she was treating him; what was wrong with that? Highway 1 stretched before him with little traffic for a Monday, and the warm sun and cool sea air got his appetite going. Jamie was going to pay for a big lunch!

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The engineer hummed down the highway at a slightly illegal clip, passing the occasional car, stopping at the more spectacular scenic vistas, not in any hurry to be on time. He was a man who hated authority and regimentation and took any opportunity to flaunt the fact that most authority needed him more than he needed them. Engineering, and music for that matter, required reams of self-discipline, and his distain for external controls was no doubt a reaction to his internal restraint. After an all too brief ride Billy pulled into town. Bandon hadn't noticed that the century had changed thirty years earlier. It was still sleepy, still fishy, still touristy for the budget minded. A gem, a diamond in the rough that was glad to be that way. Chain and franchise restaurants didn't do well here, as the locals and visitors alike preferred the inexpensive yet exceptional local fare. Frantonio's was a fixture in this neck of the Oregon coast, not a pristine new building but not a rundown barn either. It eschewed the faux Italian villa look many such restaurants go for; its facade merely said Good Food Within without any garish signs. Billy parked and wandered inside. It was 2:45; he had succeeded in being fashionably late. Looking around, though, he didn't immediately see Jamie, or Nathan for that matter. Of course, he wouldn't expect to, this being a real restaurant and not a virtual space. But he was not about to put anything past her. He decided to wash up first--the place was not busy in the middle of the afternoon--and then check with the hostess. Coming out of the restroom a couple of minutes later he saw Jamie, wearing a long peasant skirt and lace blouse, walk through the front door of Frantonio's. She didn't even gaze around for him; she immediately looked right at him, smiled a disarming smile, and waved. They met at a high-backed wooden booth halfway between them that would afford them some seclusion. "Billy! So good to see you in the flesh! Hope you didn't have to wait long..." (Damn! My best laid schemes went aft a-gley) "...I was detained in an earlier meeting with James." "No harm done" (He was not going to admit his late arrival! Let her think he's the wronged party.) "Good! Let's eat." They motioned to the waitress and ordered the house specialty, a seafood pizza. Jamie and Billy traded small talk for a few minutes, but then after one of those brief lulls that come in every conversation Jamie looked at Billy without her usual Disappearing Cat grin and spoke. "I got the feeling when we were all talking back at that diner that you had reservations about this project. I'd like to hear them." Billy wore his poker face; this was too good a gig to blow, but needed to get some things clear in his mind. "You know, your technology is really impressive, and I got no doubts about your stroke and everything, but, well this whole story about a Greater Universe or whatever. You

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know, that's just a little far out. And that idea about some super version of MIVI being able to save the Moon. Shouldn't we be trying to do something more positive about it? If it means the end of the Earth, why don't we, why don't you, because you have so much pull, get a movement going to save the Moon? It just seems like a waste of time to play in VR if this major disaster is going to happen." Jamie was about to reply when the pizza arrived. An inopportune moment for pizza, but fortunately it was too hot to eat right then. She had a couple of minutes. "Let me answer the second question first. Think of your basic Physics. An object composed of Nickel and Iron, traveling at 60,000 miles per hour relative to the Moon. An ellipsoid 50km along its major axis, 10km across its equator. That's power on the order of 1026 joules every second, about equal to the Sun's output. There's nothing in current Real World technology that can match that. Besides, most of the world is so scientifically illiterate and innumerate that we couldn't begin to explain to them. Remember, it's already been reported in the mainstream media, and few are worried. Oh, you see the occasional Op-Ed piece about how we should Save the Moon, and of course Sci-Am is very involved with the research, but the world at large, the UN in particular, is obsessed with global warming. Their scientific agendas are merely pretexts for political ones. And they can't make political hay out of a lunar impactor. Nope, the only hope is to alter the reality of the impact itself, not try to prevent it with the impotent tools available in the Real World." This kept Billy quiet as the couple devoured the pizza. The seriousness of the conversation detracted from the enjoyment of this most excellent meal. Billy finally sat back, took a deep breath and let out a sigh. "OK. So you can't ..." "WE can't Billy. I hope you're still with us?" "So far. OK, so we can't do anything conventional about it. How could MIVI do anything about it? I guess I mean, how do you know MIVI can do anything about it?" "MIVI can't do anything about it. MIVI is just a starting point for a greater spec. And even then, whatever you come up with won't do a thing either. It's merely a vehicle, a catalyst, to launch first Kathryn, then the rest of the team, into a gestalt with others like us. This whole project just serves to focus us like a big lens. I'm confident that, if you allow yourself to get wrapped up in the project, not worrying about "believing" in some fantasy, your latent abilities will surface. Listen, have you ever been totally carried away by the music you're playing? Felt a connection with your fellow musicians that went way beyond any other form of communication? Like it had you plugged into each other brain to brain? That's what we're looking for, that's what we hope this group can achieve. However, when we get it, we'll be plugged into Mentors all over the world. We'll attain a "critical

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mass" so to speak, and, well, you won't believe it, you just won't. I know; I've been there." Billy's resolve to remain overtly pissed was fading fast. A good night's sleep, a fine ride, great meal, major babe--it was tough to maintain the image of the stubborn engineer. He had one last card to play. "What about my gigs? You know, I've got a lot of gigs lined up, in real clubs and on the net." "Not a problem," Jamie said. "The real work won't start for several months. I've already broadly explained to James the principles behind MIVI, but you'll have to fill in the details if he has any questions. And then I think you'll do your part without any fuss. The math and code will be in place, and we picked you precisely because of your ability to get the job done. In fact, your musical mind will help you find the solutions." "How's that?" "I don't know for sure, just a hunch. But you'll have some free time. And don't you have some unfinished business with a couple of young ladies back home?" Jamie teased. If Billy's complexion would have allowed him to blush he would have. "How'd you know that? You won't tell one about the other, will you?" "Nah, a rogue like yourself needs extra, er, attention, the kind only Amanda and Leigh can provide. I won't say a word," she said with a wink. "Now, I can't give you too much to work on while you wait for the rest of us, but I'm getting some ideas and might ask you to do a little side project. I want to talk MIVI theory with you sometime, but right now I've got to pay the bill and get going. And I expect you want to get in a few hours ride, eh?" There was just no way to say no to this woman. Billy dropped all pretense of being obstinate and assured Jamie that he was committed to this project, wherever it would lead. She left the waitress a nice tip and walked outside together. "Nice bike Billy!" "Thanks. Not many rotaries left." "Well, be careful, and have a good ride. I'll be in touch." They stood for a moment awkwardly, then Jamie gave Billy a friendly hug. Persuasive woman, this one, he thought. She walked around the corner of the building, and Billy waited for a while to see what she was driving. After a while when no car appeared he fired up his motorcycle and cruised around the side. No car, no exit. Another mystery! But why ask how? He swung the bike onto the southbound lane and headed back to California. That hug had cleared his mind of technology and loaded it with thoughts of Amanda and Leigh, enough to warm his ride into the early Oregon Autumn evening.

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Chapter 13 It was almost a week before Sareena heard from the team, a week where her excitement was almost uncontainable. A secret project that would change the course of human evolution! So cool, and she was dying to tell somebody. But she was true to her word and kept her involvement (just barely) under wraps. Her mother suspected a mystery the way mothers can tell when their daughters are hiding something; however, in the way of good mothers she let Sareena have her secrets. Little did she know the depth of those secrets. School had just ended for the day and the weekend loomed ahead. The kids burst from doorways of the well-worn brick schoolhouse, thankful that they didn't have to learn anything for 48 hours. Sareena was nearly the last student to leave, eager to get back to her programming and Netlife while being a little bit down. The school bell had interrupted an interesting class on early TTL circuitry. As she walked slowly down the steps into the Kowloon heat she was so accustomed to, struggling with her backpack loaded with books, portable computer, and media she heard a boy's voice call, "Hi! Can I carry your stuff for you?" She turned to see a tall white boy of about fourteen she hadn't noticed before. Sareena typically ignored boys around her age. They were usually caught between their juvenile tendencies for shunning girls (yuck! cooties!) and becoming, via hormones, fascinated by girls' developing bodies. This boy was smiling a nice smile, no braces but good teeth, clear skin for a teenager. And he apparently wasn't showing off for his friends like some boys do. She was still suspicious though and said narrowly, "Hi. I don't know you. Why do you want to carry my stuff?" The boy's smile expanded, his eyes sparkled. "Oh, I think you do know me a little. And that pack looks heavy; I just want to help a pretty girl out because she's gonna be helping me. My name is Jamie." Sareena jumped. "Jamie! What? How can it be you? I just got outta school, real school, and I haven't been online since last night. You can't be an avatar!" Jamie grinned a teenage boy I-know-something-you-don't know grin. "I told you that you were borderline. Can move between a virtual space and a real space without thinking about it. You can't do this yet, this imaging stuff, but you can accept it (and almost understand it) when I do it." Sareena stared at the boy now holding her pack. There was something familiar about him. He didn't look anything like the woman who had taken her and that lady Kathryn to the virtual diner almost a week ago, but he did look like James a little. She ventured, "Your name is almost the

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same as that nice man, the math teacher. And you now look a little like him, around the eyes and mouth." Jamie said, "That's not completely a coincidence," and let it go without any more elucidation. "I see that you've been good and kept our little secret. Thanks; it's important." Sareena asked, "Please, why can't I tell anybody?" "Because it would not be good for the project." Jamie knew when he (she?) said that it didn't show the proper respect for this girl, and he immediately regretted it. He decided to change the subject. "Anyway, where are you in your math? What are you studying?" "I'm up to pre-calculus. I'll finish it this semester. It's easy, and they let me skip a few grades to take it. Why?" "Because we need you to put the math that James is working on into a program. The program will run the VR rig Billy will design and Kathryn will pilot. If we are successful this project will open the doorway to the Greater World." "OK. But, ah, James--" she was not real comfortable calling the great mathematician by his first name"--does math I could never understand." Jamie smiled, looking older than the teenager he pretended to be. "Don't sell yourself short, dear. You're pretty darn bright. Besides, James will be your private tutor, walking you through the important parts." Sareena brightened noticeably at this. She could test out of any math course at her school if James was her tutor! He seemed like a cool guy; he probably was a good teacher. Something to look forward to. "Airy!” she said, using the currently popular slang. “When do we start?" "Soon. He has to figure out some things first. We'll start with virtual classroom for the basics. Then he'll come to Hong Kong and you can get started. He's on a sabbatical, kinda like a working vacation, from his school, so he can teach you in person, not virtually. We'll tell your mom that the school is providing you with an advanced course tutor." Jamie winked. "That way you can legally cut some classes." This was sounding better and better, thought Sareena. But with the persistence of youth, she returned to her previous question. "How would it hurt the project if I told my mom? She wouldn't tell anyone." Jamie sighed, but was grateful to make amends for the earlier deflection. "It's a dilution/pollution problem. If you share your secret the notoriety, even in your immediate family, will dilute your efforts. And outside influences would pollute your ideas. It is your precise abilities that we need, and outside suggestions and comments might perturb, meaning alter, your own intuitions, especially if these suggestions come from someone who isn't quite a Mentor."

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Sareena thought for a second. "What about my family? Aren't they Mentors also? We're all related." Jamie looked sadly at Sareena. "No, I think you are the first in your bloodline to have that potential. Your mother is closest--clever, but not exceptional. Your brothers and sisters are pretty average EveryFolk, and your dad, whom I know you love dearly, is the typical EveryMan...” The girl interrupted, “How do I know that I’m not EveryGirl?” Jamie winked conspiratorially. “I know something about you that you’ve never told anybody. When you close your eyes real tight, and concentrate, you see a small pattern of rapidly rotating squares, kinda beige in color, with a tiny dot in their centers.” Sareena was aghast. “How did you know that?” “It’s what you call a marker. Those who are more than Everyman see these images. Since these little squares are perfectly Euclidean, we think they indicate superior mathematical symbolic ability.” “Gosh,” she said anachronistically. “Most people don’t see this image, but that’s OK. You must realize that we are not leaving everyone else behind, we are protecting them, providing for them. We love and care for them because they are our family and friends. They aren't "bad" or inferior just because they won't be joining us in the Greater World; most are good, decent people, just without our gift of advanced perception. I have, ah, a close friend, Patty, whom I love a lot, but she's an EveryWoman. Has no idea what I really am, couldn't understand it if I told her. She'd believe me, but couldn't understand." "Can't we do gene therapy or something? You know, to get everyone into the Greater World?" "No dear, at least not yet. No one knows which gene or combination of genes is responsible for this. Besides, it's not like we're all gonna leave or anything. Remember your Wenn diagrams: this Real World is just a subset of the greater one." Given all that she had seen, especially Jamie now appearing as a kid, Sareena had to ask him, "Are you living in the Greater World?" Jamie smiled slyly, "I will be." This wasn't the answer Sareena was seeking, but Jamie was a grownup, and she respected adults, even when they looked like cute boys. "Are you really a boy now?" she asked. "No, this is just an avatar of sorts. A particularly good avatar, but only because you are a talented kid. But I know a lot about little boys. Why do you ask? Don't you like boys?" "Oh, I think they're cute and all, but they're just dumb. They talk about stupid things like sports and cars and fighting and stuff." Sareena started to say something about James being different, but duh! that was

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because he was a grownup. "You make a good boy though. Will I be able to do that? Pretend to be someone else?" "Sure! Generating an avatar is easy, but it seems that, once you find yourself in the Greater World, your true nature shapes your appearance more than in the Real World. I think once Kathryn gets command of our equipment she'll be able to teach you quickly. You met her when she had a very good avatar. Convincing, wasn't she?" "Yea, totally!" "Well, I helped the process a bit, technologically, but she did most of the work. She just couldn't control it." Sareena thought for a moment. "I can see how you were that Nathan fellow when you first found Billy. That was in Net Space. And I guess how I understand you were Kathryn in Kowloon Park, and how you're a boy now, because I somehow can blur Real Space and Net Space. But didn't you appear to be someone named Natalie when you found mister, ah, James? He's not really a Net kinda guy it seems, but you met him at his house. How did you do that?" "Oh, I had a van full of equipment to help me! But with new theories and better gear we should all be online quickly. And all this depends on you and your programming skills. Feel up to it?" Jamie really didn't have to ask this. Sareena was bursting at the seams; the whole thing seemed so much more real to her after talking to Jamie. Private tutoring from a world-class mathematician, a secret project to save the planet and join a club of brainy people was awesome. But the idea of pretending to be someone else was just too cool! They had finally come to Sareena's high-rise. Jamie handed Sareena her books. "OK, I get the message. James will be ready with the new ideas in a month or two, but we'll start the lessons much sooner. It'll take time for him to bring you up to speed, but we don't want to take too much time away from his research. Your folks got that letter today, the one about the special tutoring. I think you'll have an interesting dinner tonight, talking about this "wonderful opportunity". Please, not a word about our project." "I promise. Jamie, one last thing." "Yes?" For a moment Sareena looked like the young girl she was, not the prodigy programmer about to embark on a major step in human evolution. "If we do this thing, you know, save the Earth or whatever, and if I join your Greater World, can I still live with my parents and brothers and sisters?" Jamie smiled a wise smile that belied the teenage boy she appeared to be. "Yes, of course. Our success will save and protect them, and you'll be able to live your life however you want." With that Jamie

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surprised Sareena with a hug and a peck on the cheek. The girl was first startled but then turned around and hugged the boy/woman right back. They separated, Jamie looked around to check for observers, waved and vanished with a slight pop.

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Chapter 14 Kathryn found herself liking this woman who sat across from her in the English Pub in Santa Monica. It was one of those warm Santa Ana days in Autumn and Kathryn, dressed in short-shorts and a tube top was “doing lunch” with her new friend/boss/compatriot. Jamie treated her with the same respect, showed her the same confidence that she had shown to the two men in her team. Kathryn was further impressed by the way Jamie had brought the little girl into the group, never talking down to her, always listening closely to Sareena's ideas and concerns, gently correcting and guiding her, not as a mother but more like a teacher, or the Mentor she professed to be. Yes, there was much to admire in Jamie. Kathryn still wasn't sure about that whole Greater World stuff, but the prospect of working on something scientific began to appeal to her in a way she had never imagined. Acting had been an all-consuming passion when she was younger; science was always below her radar. Now, without any technical education or training, Kathryn had been drawn into a group of tech-minded people on Jamie's faith in her. And although she was only the pilot, not a researcher or technician, she was caught up in the adventure, the fun of the enterprise. And the pay was good too! Jamie was talking about the timeline for the project, but not in a rigorous fashion: there was ample opportunity for girl chat. "Like I said, James has to do the math before we can really get started. Normally, developing a whole branch of Mathematics takes years, but he has already done most of heavy lifting, as it were. One of the most time-consuming things in science and math is the endless peer review, when your colleagues examine and critique your work. A wonderful system of checks and error correction, but that won't be necessary here. I give him a month or two, surely by January, and with a little focusing help from me he'll come up with some brilliant algorithm that generates a consistent Mobius Space. And once our team implements that, we should be able to connect the patches of the Greater World." Kathryn sipped on her Guinness. It had been over a month since she had been in that virtual diner meeting and learned of all this unbelievable stuff. Jamie later called to reassure her while she got things underway. She told the future VR pilot to sit tight and try to relax, which Kathryn did in spades, putting this upcoming adventure almost out of her head. But when Jamie called to set up this lunch meeting, Kathryn began to think more about her collaborators. "Jamie, the guys you picked for the team. They seem like loners. Are they married?"

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"Nope, although Billy is a 'player', as he calls it. James is in a selfimposed retirement. He hasn't had much luck with relationships over the years. It's not that he abuses his girlfriends, or cheats, or anything. They just seem to tire of him, at least according to him. So he's given up even trying." Then she remembered a telling appraisal during a walk in the Virginia hills. "But you know, I bet he secretly would like to be with someone." Kathryn sipped. "He seems so nice. You know, I haven't had a romance for many years. Leon and I were as close to a romance as you could get, but it was never physical. And since he died I've been involved with so much NetSex that I haven't been inclined to find a real lover." "Whoa!" cried Jamie, "I'm just project coordinator, not a matchmaker. If you want to..." "No no. I was just fantasizing. Not about James, just in general." But Kathryn's face said otherwise. Jamie decided to get back to business. "There is an intermediate step I'm working on with Billy before the Mobius technology is ready for you. Sort of a training rig. It's kinda weird when you first think about it, but it's a logical step for you who are so experienced with a Body Double. It doesn't have a technical name, but I call it ‘Hitch-hiking.’" "And that is??" "Hitch-hiking means that you come along for the ride, first when I do my avatar things, and then Real World stuff. You can hear, taste, feel, everything I do, except that instead of the telemetry from a Body Double you get the feedback directly from my brain. You..." "Hold it! Wait a minute! Slow down! You mean I possess your body like some kind of demon?" Jamie laughed so loud that other customers in the restaurant looked to see what was going on. "No,” she said, still chuckling, “it's more like the ultimate home movie. And it's all done with technology, so there's nothing supernatural about it. We'll meet again in a week or so, set up a workspace, and I'll show you how it's done." Kathryn was not convinced that she wanted any part of this. "And why are we doing this?" Jamie, now calmed down from her laughter, said, "The first trips into Mobius Space you take will be very disorienting. Remember how disconcerting it was becoming that Asian woman? It will be way more real than that. Hitching a ride with me is a good way to acclimate." Kathryn didn't respond, but an unspoken "Well, if you say so" hanging in the air above her closed the discussion for now. There is a theory that conversations have a certain periodicity; depending upon who's involved in the discourse, every so often, and predictably so, a

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conversation hits a node, a point where silence naturally occurs. Perhaps this is to give the talkers time to collect their thoughts; Jamie took advantage of the lull to munch on her Shepard's Pie. “Seems like I’m always eating with you guys,” she mumbled between bites. Kathryn didn’t answer. She sipped and pondered; a darkness crept into her blue eyes and stretched into down her face. "You know Jamie, I still don't know why you picked me for this group. I mean, you're all so smart! James is a math whiz, Billy builds all this high-tech equipment, the girl's a super-programmer at thirteen. You're a Physicist. What am I? A failed actress! Oh yeah, I can run the Body Double suit, give the customers what they want, but I didn't invent it, design it, build it. If it breaks I can't even fix it! I like the idea of being in a science project, but girl, I feel so blonde! How will know what to do? What happens if something goes wrong? I don't have the brains to..." She hung her head in her hands. Jamie got up and came around to Kathryn's side of the booth and sat next to her, putting her arm around the near-sobbing woman. "First of all, brains and knowledge are two different things. You can't know something unless you've first learned it. How many science courses did you have in school? How many scientific books have you read?" Kathryn said in a small voice, "None and none." "There, how could you possibly know about gyroscopic stabilization, evolution, or MIVI applications? How do you know that, if you had studied these things, that you too wouldn't be a 'whiz'?" Kathryn turned to look at Jamie. "I don't know. They never made do any of that stuff at school." "So, you could be a latent math genius, like James." Kathryn brightened a little at this. "Then maybe I could talk to him and not sound so dumb." "Girlfriend, James would never think you're dumb, even if mathematics never entered the conversation. He's not that type of boy. Now, back to you. Did you realize that you were the first person to experience that, I don't know what to call it--avatar embodiment?--back in Kowloon Park..." "How do you know I was the first?" "I just do, don't worry about it. You were the first, and though it was a bit scary because you had no control, it took a singly unique person with the nascent ability to project fully into another reality to make it happen. EveryMan and EveryWoman won't ever be able to conceive of anything they can't touch or smell firsthand. Look around at all these people. They are quite content to have a nightly beer, have sex three times a week, watch the game, shop, and work all their lives at a job they can walk through blindfolded, so they can look forward to retirement where

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they sit around and remember how good things used to be. There is nothing more to their lives, and they are quite happy with that. Nothing to rock their worldview, and that’s fine, no slight intended on my part. They live life to its fullest, with the freedom to do what they care most about, but don't suffer from a lack of intellectual stimulation because they have no great intellectual aspirations. What we scientists and artists do just doesn’t occur to them." Kathryn thought for a minute. "That's so sad! When Leon was alive, he and I would go to museums and shows, even if they were mostly sims of exhibits or performances of the last century. I always thought it was because Leon was much older and longed for his lost youth. But you know, I don't think there were any real performances to see, even if we wanted to." "Right! What passes for art today is all rehash, redux, a poor imitation of the classics. The virtual performance I stole Billy from, that was a fifty-year-old show. Because of dysgenesis, few are interested in the creative arts these days, and fewer are able to create it. Look at your last job; you were the creative agent behind your clients' fantasies. Do you think any of them would have enjoyed a Philip Glass concert more than making love to a simulation of a human?" "No, I can't see that happening." "And that’s fine for them, it’s what gets them through the night, but you are different. Your innate creativity, your talent to project yourself convincingly into different worlds, and your latent abilities in any science you wish to pursue make you ideal for our project. I researched you well before I invaded the Kowloon Park space and tweaked it a bit to allow you to become that Asian woman, not just play her." Kathryn gave a subtle Oriental bow to Jamie, and grinned. "That was a dirty trick, whatever you did, but I forgive you." She kissed Jamie in the cheek. "Now that I think about it, that was pretty neat! I really felt like a different person. Everything was so real!" "I know it was. That's a minute taste of what Mobius Space will be like, an real alternate reality, not just virtual space. Not a fantasy. You can do this, better than any of us." Jamie motioned to the bar wench for the bill. "Now, I have to get going. Many things to do. You alright now?" Kathryn smiled and nodded. "I guess so. I'll have to give it some time." "Good! We're on our way. Now let's go; as much as I love Santa Monica, they're liable to pass some ordinance while we're sitting here that'll make whatever we're doing illegal or taxable!"

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Chapter 15 "We're coming up on twenty-five minutes after the hour here on the Intra-Global News Network. I'm Vapidia Wallace along with Fred Mamry, thank you for joining us! Fred, that package on extending your pet's life was fascinating. I'll bet there are millions of folks who'd like to have their Fluffy or Rex live to be thirty, or even forty!" "Yes, Vapidia, it's mind boggling what science can do. Speaking of mind boggling, here's an update on that story we've been following for several months. It seems that scientists are more certain about that meteor that's supposed to hit the Moon within the next year or so. For more on this story we turn to Earthman David Navarrro at JPL, the man with the tripleR. Dave?" "Thanks Fred. The meteor, or asteroid as scientists call it, has been given the designation JMS 2031A to indicate the discoverer and the year it was first seen. And if it hits the Moon as predicted, we here on Planet Earth will be treated to a spectacular celestial fireworks show." "Dave, is there any danger to us on Earth?" "There is a slight chance that some fragments of the collision will head towards us, but our atmosphere will protect us. They tell me that the object is the size of Los Angeles and moving at tremendous speed. I have the exact numbers here, but they are frankly numbers only a scientist could appreciate." "Wow! One more thing before we let you go. Are the scientists going to do anything to try to stop the collision?" "Well Vapidia, there is talk of some new kind of laser, but the project is very hush hush. Something to do with new research I suppose. Some military folks have suggested reviving the world's nuclear arsenals to blow the asteroid from the sky. The committee responsible for oversight of those weapons is chaired by minority leader Doltman (Republicrat). We'll be keeping a close watch on these continuing stories for you." "Thanks Dave! That was David Navarrro, our resident science expert. Pretty interesting stuff, huh Fred?" "Yes, but that's not the only interesting thing in the stars. The stars of basketball showed up today..." _______________________________________________ And so, with the approach of winter, the worked commenced in a world oblivious. Jamie gently but firmly guided her team in their researches, even though their growing fascination with the project would have been motivation enough. She also kept an eye on this disturbing revived interest in nuclear weapons, something she had not anticipated. However, she attributed this lapse to her dealing with the many changes

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she’d been through the past couple of years, and concentrated on the task at hand. Billy and James communicated frequently about the theory and the technology. The mathematician frequently went off subject and asked Billy about his music. James was no musician but had a love for the art, both modern and classical. Though he had been born several years after The Wall was first performed, James found it to be the most interesting period piece from the late 20th century, pretty much the last large-scale work of the genre. For his part Billy became more interested in James’ mathematics. As an engineer he was of course facile with numbers, but the theory behind his formulas was usually necessary only in school. Now he found that understanding the principles aided his designs more than he had imagined. When he communicated this to Jamie on one of their frequent visits she was doubly glad: not only was the preliminary work progressing, but this cross-disciplinary interest hinted at the first stirrings of gestalt within the group. She had also set up a tentative tutoring schedule for Sareena, at first in a cyberspace classroom; later, when James had completed most of his work he and Sareena would study face to face. Jamie created a virtual space similar to the 'diner' where the group had its first meeting, although incongruously there was a whiteboard and pair of tablet computers installed in the booth. And this diner never had any customers other than the teacher and his pupil. The waitress kept them supplied with refreshments, and with the sea as their backdrop James taught Sareena the basics of super-valued numerical methods. It was a tribute to James' skill as a teacher, Sareena's innate abilities, and to the fact that when the student has curiosity and an open mind, higher mathematics isn't as arcane as most people believe it is. Of course, the operative term is 'most people'; this teenager was not 'most people'. They started with a review of logarithms, series, and how to represent the former by the latter. Sareena's homework was to solve log equations using series expansion, then translate the algorithms to code so that any such problem could be addressed. Naturally there were such programs in the public domain, but she had to code from scratch. Next she was required to reduce the number of lines of code to a bare minimum and still have the program run successfully. Later she would admit that this was the more difficult task, as she had done practically no numerical analysis writing, and relied upon canned routines for whatever math was required in her Mom's business programs. From logarithms they progressed to statistics; again this was review for Sareena, except that she had never written programs to deal with the subject. But she tackled every course of study he threw at her with youthful enthusiasm. Jamie recognized before long that much of this

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industry on Sareena's part was to please her tutor. How she felt about this added motivation she was not sure, and she couldn't devote much mulling time to it, so busy was she with her subtle but essential coordination/supervision of the project and all of its logistics. Eventually she just shrugged and was grateful for the progress Sareena was making. Better and better the student got at translating math to code, conquering calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, and lastly fractal compression theory. Perhaps conquering isn't quite the correct term. Because of the methods James employed in his teaching, Sareena learned just enough about the math to write her translations; she lacked the background of derivation and study to fully understand just what she was doing. That was not the point however; her job was to act as an interpreter for James, devising software to control the devices Billy would design. Eventually the rudimentary lessons would be over, and meeting virtually would not be the best way to teach (or learn) the hugely more complicated Exalog methods James would use to solve the Mobius Space problem. The virtual method of one-on-one teaching was a little disconcerting; the immediacy of the feedback from his student was far different from the videogame-like quality of virtual lecturing. James marveled at Sareena's sense of place and total ease in their diner/studyhall, but he felt there was something missing. His MIVI interface just didn't convey all the signals a human body gives, like subtle body language or subvocalizations--although that might be due to his lack of command of the technology. To him his student seemed very close to real, but he felt as if he was manipulating a puppet of himself. Not the best environment to teach that which he was just figuring out for the first time! This challenge occupied all his time away from the tutoring. He and the omnipresent Bugger walked and worked everyday once the school granted him a highly irregular mid-semester sabbatical leave. That Jamie must have some influence, he thought, to pull that off. The truth was, the other math professors were clamoring to teach his tensor analysis seminar, so everyone was happy, including the students, as much grade inflation resulted to compensate for the change of instructors midstream. He soon discovered that the super-valued possibilities were only a small fraction of all possibilities, because the initial conjecture was loosely premised on the number of particles in the universe. This 1080 was only the number of optically visible particles; dark matter increased this number twenty-fold, and the associated dark energy augmented the degrees of freedom. After many consultations with living physicists, and the new computer simulacrums of deceased ones (useful for background but unreliable for extrapolation), James realized that manipulation of dark energy was the key. This one-third of extant substance could be channeled, funneled by means of Zero-Point Potentials, something that had been

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already partially explored. James concluded after about six weeks that a central ZPP generator, properly driven, could direct dark energy photons to squeeze Mobius Manifolds at will. But what a hugely, vastly complicated set of controls it would require! If it weren't for his Exalog algorithms this would be impossible with any existing technology, much less something so rudimentary as MIVI. He had been updating Jamie regularly over the month and a half; she even joined him on the occasional forest walk, filling him in on some of the Physics. However, when he finally put it all together he couldn't wait to tell her. As if on cue, Jamie drove up the morning he was going to call her. She was dressed in a loose fitting blouse and long skirt, all covered by a shawl, very much in fashion that winter. She also had a small interface box on her belt. James didn't inquire of that, though it didn't look like a common network connector. "And they say there's no such thing as synchronicity! Good to see you my dear!" He gave her what had become their greeting hug. "I was just going to call you. My part of our little project just came together." "I knew you could do it!" and she stood on her toes to give him an auntly kiss on the cheek. "Fill me in." Which he did over coke, coffee, and something he invented called Breakfast Pizza, although it was near noon. He wrapped up an hour later, after a few insightful questions from Jamie, with "Don't ask me how on Earth Sareena will put this into code, or how Billy will interface MIVI with a ZPP generator. More to the point, where will you get the funds for a ZPPG? There are only about a dozen around the world, all in fulltime use. And they cost beaucoup bucks." "Not your worry, my dear boy..." (James always had to grin when this young woman called him 'my dear boy') "...As you might have guessed, I have friends in high places. Now that I know what we need I'll call in some favors. I'm sure we can piggyback on, say, the Berkeley ZPPG. I know Professor Vong, the woman in charge there at the Lawrence Berkeley Labs, very well. As for Sareena, you've reported that she's progressing rapidly. Can she handle it?" "I'd have to say yes, based on what I've seen of her. She's quite amazing, far superior to anyone I have taught at UVa. But this virtual diner thing won't do. It just won’t do! I'll have to go to Hong Kong to properly guide her through this crazy math. Boy! That’ll be a total mindblow for her. It's so much more theoretical and involved. I have gigabytes of notes alone. Teaching it will be bitch and a half. How can a schoolgirl have that much time to learn this, along with everything else she has to do?" Jamie looked thoughtful. "We'll have to be creative," she said conspiratorially as she rose. "But now I have places to go, people to see. James, you've not disappointed. In fact, it took you less time that I thought.

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Congratulations again. And an early Happy New Year!" Hug. "Get some sleep, then start packing. I'll find get your tickets and a nice place for you to stay in Kowloon. But we're on our way!"

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Chapter 16 Unbeknownst to James during what came to be celebrated as the Breakfast Pizza Colloquium, Jamie was not alone: Kathryn was along for the ride during one of her early hitchhiking sessions. Soon after the women met in the English Pub in Santa Monica, Jamie set up a small workspace up in the San Fernando Valley where she could begin to train Kathryn in the art and science of hitch-hiking. Even though Kathryn was an expert with a Body Double, she would need extensive re-education to accept the feedback from a human brain. Jamie developed the concept of hitchhiking shortly after she met with Billy a second time, when he was back in Santa Cruz. She'd started toying with the idea after Billy briefed her on the theory and designs behind MIVI, and it seemed a logical extension of the technology. It was when she was casting about for something to engage Kathryn that Jamie decided to pursue her idea. She went back to Billy--who was frankly sitting around bored, having finished up his loose ends at GameChamp rather quickly--with what she wanted and the basics of the interface specifications. The engineer was eager to do something useful while he waited to employ Sareena's software drivers, so he started researching the med-tech archives for EEG feedback chips that he could adapt to his MIVI gear. The season was changing as best it could in Southern California as they got started. Once the Santa Ana winds died away the storms from the Gulf of Alaska that were beginning to pound the Northwest spun off enough moisture to wet the Southland occasionally. This gave local weather forecasters something to talk about, though "Stormwatch 2032" overstated the ½ inch of precipitation a bit. Jamie and Kathryn dodged the reticent raindrops as they traversed the valleys and basin in search of "stuff". The women spent a lot of time together assembling the Studio, as they called it. Aside from gathering some basic equipment that would handle MIVI, they decorated the workspace with comfortable furniture and objects d'art. They joked about how the men on the team would comment on the various non-utilitarian aspects of their studio. Well, this wasn't to be the main installation of the Mobius Technology; it was a side project, just for them, so the hell with masculine pragmatism! Their facility was located below the Verdugo Hills north of Burbank proper, far enough from the airport so that the planes didn't buzz too closely overhead. It wasn't too big, spacious enough though, with ample network bandwidth and power. Jamie's credit seemed bottomless, so in addition to the equipment they had bought plenty of plants, both real and artificial, comfy chairs and sofas, some great throw rugs, elegant but

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simple office furniture, and a few Southwestern style fabric wall hangings. Later, when they'd be working with the Mobius Technology that would be built near Berkeley, this studio would serve as a remote site. But for now it was their 'secret' clubhouse. Jamie, a woman who seemed to be comfortable with anyone, was especially open with Kathryn, perhaps because she reminded her of someone special. Though there were some things that she couldn't reveal, Jamie had a feeling she could trust Kathryn with anything. During this time Kathryn dropped some not-so-subtle inquiries about James that her friend deflected with vague answers. Jamie had no experience or talent in matchmaking and was not about to head down a one-way street with no outlet. Kathryn was not persistent though, and let the matter drop whenever her investigation was thwarted. Mostly they talked about film and theatre, the state of the world and the years of prosperity under a hands-off government, despite the general population's disinterest in anything intellectual. It was during these conversation, and thoughtful hours alone, that Kathryn came to realize that she was different from EveryWoman. The actress turned consort turned sex surrogate turned pilot began to lose her insecurity about working with science types. For all those years in school and with Leon she had never played dumb; she just had never exercised her innate reasoning skills to any extent. While the women painted and wired their studio Jamie explained many of the theoretical and technical aspects of the Mobius project, and explained them in a clear and logical way. Gee, Physics isn't so difficult after all! She must have been a hell of a teacher Kathryn thought. And so young! Can't be experience, must be raw talent, although Kathryn suspected that there was some deep dark and very telling secret that Jamie was hiding. Every once in a while she did something that spoke of a person of many years, like in the way she spoke about a film obviously released decades before she was born. And how, occasionally she did something decidedly unfeminine; a comment on the figure of a woman, something like that. And though she was slender she definitely had a man's appetite; Jamie was always munching on something! No matter. In the weeks that they worked until Billy could deliver the hitchhiking MIVI gear Kathryn had grown close to Jamie, felt like she could trust her to the ends of the Earth. Billy delivered version 1.0 of his contraption, which he dubbed irreverently the Virtual Thumb, about three weeks after Jamie made her request, driving down from Santa Cruz in his Jeep to personally deliver it. Truth to tell, he could have shipped the unit, but apparently there was a young lady in LA who required his company. On whether this liaison had sped development of the Virtual Thumb along Jamie would not speculate.

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The hitchhiker's interface to the Thumb was not much different than a standard MIVI headset, suitable for riding along with someone else's avatar; later, version 2.0 would include a full body suit for hitching in the Real World. For the driver, the interface was much more complicated, and 2.0 would a bit physically intrusive, necessarily tuned to Jamie's physiology. Her unit included a splitter, to send identical signals to both women, and an EEG feedback transponder so Kathryn could begin to get a sense of Jamie's reactions to stimuli. (She was happy not to have to shave her head like Billy for the newer EEG sensors!) The hitchhiker had to become familiar with these autonomic signals so that when she later received more elaborate telemetry in the body suit, and eventually the 3.0 implants, she could interpret it correctly. Jamie felt that this little project was a good introduction to the gear that would be forthcoming with the Mobius Space technology. Maybe they all should try it, she thought, before each team member dons the MS gear. Then again, maybe not. How could Billy understand, how would James handle, the telemetry from a female? Some sensations were pretty close, but others would be totally foreign. Might be a good learning experience, but it might be a little too intimate for comfort. Somehow Jamie didn't mind Kathryn sharing her experiences at such a fundamental level, but Billy? Nah. James? Definitely not! Even Sareena, female but still a child really, might not be a good candidate. It was after a couple of days of tuning the equipment that Kathryn received her first feedback from Jamie while the latter was virtually visiting a Cyberpark, a neutral and innocuous place for testing the Thumb. After some tweaking they got an A/V connection between them. For Jamie it was a typical virtual outing, despite the knowledge that someone was along for the ride. For Kathryn however, it was a decidedly a different experience than the familiar NetSpace foray. Later when asked to describe it, she had a hard time putting it into words. Normally when one projects an avatar into a virtual space there is a sense of place and a strong sense of control. The audio data was nominal since the two women had similar aural abilities, but she felt dizzy every time Jamie turned to 'look' at something; Kathryn guessed that her brain anticipated a change of view, and when it happened without warning her senses reacted strangely, like suddenly falling then quickly stopping. One experiences this weirdness in a dream, but the telemetry from Jamie was more vivid than any dream. Jamie decided than an environment where there's a lot of stimulus, like walking through a crowded virtual park, was too much to start with for Kathryn. She let her rider relax for a day, so as not to turn her off from the sensation altogether. Their next trip was even more benign: Jamie went to a virtual seacliff and sat watching the waves. This was much easier for Kathryn to take; the scene was from the hills behind Leo Carrillo

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State Park north of Malibu. Jamie allowed her gaze to drift slowly from the breakers, to the cars along California 1, to the campers in the park, and back to the open sea. Kathryn's mind was less inclined this time to fight the sensation of looking through someone else's eyes, and her feedback telemetry told Jamie that she was much more calm than their first outing. Another day of rest and dalliance and adjusting the gear, then Jamie and Kathryn were off on another hitchhiking excursion, this time to a virtual art museum. These had become popular since the general population had lost any interest in examining the works of Van Gogh or Diego in person. Jamie had dialed in an almost empty hall, but there were a few other visitors from around the world, real people visiting via an avatar. This provided some unscripted input for the hitchhiker, but Jamie was sure to not move quickly or look at too many paintings at once. As the days went by the pair visited increasingly animated Net spaces; a shopping arcade, a drive in the country, then the city, and finally, just before Billy's 2.0 Thumb showed up, the two-as-one went to a Kate Bush replay concert at the virtual Hammersmith Odeon. Kate Bush was a personal favorite of Jamie, and amazingly, even though the telemetry to Kathryn was strictly A/V, the latter began to experience some of the emotional responses of her guide. When the singer performed "England, My Lionheart", Jamie was moved to tears (not her avatar, of course!), but it was Kathryn's eyes that moistened from Jamie's emotional reaction to the song. All these sensations were necessary, even the initial dizziness, to acclimate Kathryn to the Thumb and eventually the Mobius Technology, and the whole otherworldliness that these devices provided. The panic she felt when she had been trapped as the Asian woman would be nothing compared with the full-body input from the 2.0 Thumb, unless she adjusted gradually. Thumb 1.0 definitely helped, but now it was time to fish or cut bait. The suit Billy brought fit Jamie very snugly, and in some cases intrusively, and was loaded with the latest biosensors. It was therefore designed to be worn for only short periods of time. Version 3.0 would be ready soon, and was far more portable, using implants instead of surface sensors. The idea behind the suit was twofold: the Thumb had to record the entire repertoire of the wearer's physiological responses to all situations, no small feat, and something an EEG transponder couldn't possibly accommodate. And after this process was complete and Kathryn had become familiar with the input from 2.0, less bandwidth would be necessary to transmit the reaction data. Kathryn's interface was almost all head mounted, stimulating by induction the appropriate brain centers. It was connected via a peripheral box to the studio's computer running an upgraded version of MIVI.

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When Kathryn played the Body Double (it seemed like years ago!) she had a feedback suit and EEG, ocular, and aural inputs, but there was never any question that she was running a machine. The first time she and Jamie were connected the sensation was frightening! There was an overwhelming sense of being helplessly and remorselessly shifted in time and space. After years of living in your own skin you become used to the signals your eyes, ears, nose, nerves give you. When Jamie opened her eyes Kathryn realized that Thumb 1.0 was much closer to regular Net experiences than this. Focus, reaction to color, even light intensity were all hugely different. She heard sounds differently, felt heat differently; her saliva tasted strange. Everything, from the moisture on Jamie's lips to the various aches and pains every body exhibits, filled Kathryn's mind. She thought it would take weeks to get used to this. The two-as-one spent an entire day just sitting, stretching, walking around the studio, eating, talking, even singing, in slow, easy stages. When it came time to disconnect the reversion to Kathryn proper was almost as jolting. Afterwards the women talked and talked about the Kathryn's sensations and reactions; the inherent communication abilities woman have were essential to sorting out this intensely emotional and very intimate experience. Not even lovers know their mates to the extent that the hitchhiker knows the driver; it was effectively a co-existence of two people in one body. Jamie, a woman with an unflinchingly strong personality, found that her ego was threatened by this invasion of her body. Kathryn felt the opposite; her sense of self diminished during the connection. These issues needed to be resolved before they could move on, so they talked and shared while they tuned and tweaked the gear. In the end however, Jamie's strong will and Kathryn's innate ability to accept other realities proved to be more important than the Thumb technology itself. After two weeks of trivial but essential co-existence training Billy brought the 3.0 implants. These were very small subdermal devices painless inserted in various areas of Jamie's body, networked via her skin's natural galvanic properties to a transponder she wore on her belt. The sensors were good for several months of operation, after which time they would dissolve harmlessly. They had been used for years to monitor patients, but Billy modified them for faster response time and greater bandwidth. The transponder was also a Derricks original, adjusted to encode the sensors' data for the Thumb receiver. Now that Kathryn was attuned to Jamie's data-stream, the microsensors provided just enough information for the hitch-hiker, conserving bandwidth, with Kathryn's brain and the Thumb's memory filling in the details. For their first test flight Jamie decided to walk to a nearby library. There the sensory would be manageable, and it would provide an interesting challenge to see if Kathryn retained the information Jamie read.

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This proved to be a partial success; Kathryn was by now quite comfortable letting Jamie drive, enjoying the warm California winter sun on her face, the wet winter winds in her hair, the click of her boots on the sidewalk, and the flexing of Jamie's strong legs. However, Jamie read at a considerably faster rate than Kathryn, so the retention aspect of the test didn't quite work out. But the two had gotten over the trauma of the threat to their individualities, and though Jamie had only the intellectual knowledge of another along with for the ride, Kathryn really felt like she had just visited a library. She had sublimated the lack of control of "her" body into the feelings she had when engrossed in a role back in college. Then, after all the study and rehearsal, the actress knew her part intimately, and her lines, her movements around the stage, her reactions to other actors seemed to be controlled by her character, not by herself. It had become almost natural to her, hitching along with Jamie. They were now the closest of sisters, closer than twins could ever be, even when Kathryn removed her interface and returned to being herself. And Jamie now knew that putting a male into the receiver end would cause a huge ego problem for the man; there was just not enough common ground for a proper connection. But the exposure was vital in preparing Kathryn for the Mobius experiences to come, and after a few more test runs the two women would be ready for some real trips.

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Chapter 17 Imagine being recalled from the city council of the People's Republic of Santa Monica for being too statist! Ever since the wave of libertarianism swept through American politics after decades of a nanny state, few local politicians were prone to intrude into the lives of the citizens and their businesses. But there were exceptions, and the little town west of Los Angeles seemed to attract them. There they still tried to regulate what businesses could open, what their employees could or couldn't wear, what they could charge their customers. They tried to control what people could do in their cars; women even had been ticketed for applying makeup, and when it was found that a few of these were involved in the world's oldest profession, more ordinances, codes, and laws were passed to govern consensual adult activity. Of course, the fines from violations went to support the politicians. And the citizens of Santa Monica put up with it, taking solace in the location and beauty of their town, and being assured that all the laws and regulations were for their own good. But when city councilman Al Hinterland lobbied for a law that would limit bicycle speeds, with a rider to charge fees to use the beach's bike path, long known as The Strand, the people finally revolted, drew up a petition, and yanked Councilman Hinterland from office. What's an out-of-work ideologue supposed to do? He had come from a long line public 'servants' who earned a living figuratively breaking the legs of citizens then handing them a crutch and saying "See? What would you do without me?" Long ago he had passed the Bar, really the only bar he ever passed, spending his public earnings on libations for himself and his less ambitious (but voting!) constituents. Now that he was cut off from his marks in Santa Monica, he had to find something else to justify his 'philosophy'. He found a suitable clientele up in the San Fernando; he would champion the disenfranchised, the unfortunate, the under-represented. Not those hampered by physical impairments mind you, they were few and largely self-sufficient anyway. Hinterland's training in the pubs of Santa Monica had taught him that there were sufficient numbers of people who seldom chose to work, if ever, and were easily led with the promise free money taken from the evil rich via taxes. Enough people marching in front of the TV camera might cow the weaker politicians of, say, North Hollywood or Van Nuys or Burbank, into re-instituting some kind of welfare program abandoned when Liberty Party members showed citizens that freedom is more profitable than dependence. And where would the money for this public dole come from? The ambitious, the self-reliant, the intelligent. Two women scientists who

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seemed to have a bottomless bank account, for instance. Through his contacts he had taken note of candidates for his 'evil rich' list, those who trampled the 'little people' of the Valley without 'giving back' to society, meaning Al Hinterland. The women were by no means alone, but the cost of setting up their studio had flagged Jamie and Kathryn as, in Hinterland's eyes, too wealthy to be allowed to keep their money. The fact that they were involved in some kind of brainy research, judging from the equipment they owned, and were secretive about it made them easy targets. Ex-Councilman Hinterland always found it profitable to demonize the intelligent in the eyes of the mundane, and these two would be no exception. Hinterland was not one to believe in synchronicity (unless, of course, it endeared him to some potential constituents), but he had to admit that it was portentous when his nephew Ernie rang him up right about this time, looking very much the young Washington staffer. "Hi Uncle Al! How are things on the Left Coast?" "Ernie, you dog! Things aren't too bad. How's that congressman of yours?" "Fighting the good fight, as always." “Well, we still have too many holdouts here, damned Libertines..." "Libertarians?" "Yeah, whatever. Too many of them, whatever you call 'em. They've got most people convinced that they don't need us. Ha! Damned sheep! But I think I've got something to stir 'em up. You know Ernie, always go back to basics. To get some political momentum going start with a small vocal group of supporters, find something most people don't understand, demonize it, then shout until they believe you." "Funny you should mention that Uncle. I've been casting about for something I can suggest to Congressman Doltman to get his career back in the mainstream. That global warming stuff isn't panning out. No icecaps are melting, no seacoasts are flooding. It’s stale, we need something new. Got any ideas?" "Ideas? Sure! Most people ignore what they don't understand, but if you can make them afraid of it, you got a start. Now, I've found a couple of pointy-headed scientist women up here in the Valley. They're up to something; I've called in some favors in the county clerk's office, had 'em check out licenses, permits, that sort of thing. I found out a lot about one of them, and, get this, not a thing on the other. A total blank--that's suspicious right there. And I got records of what they've bought for their lab. You should see the equipment! Must be millions of dollars worth. Don't know what it all does, but I'm sure I can find a law somewhere that'll show they're doing something illegal. Maybe tax evasion, I don't know; not much

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in the way of taxes left here outside of my old domain. But hitting the brainy types is always lucrative. Regular people resent those smug, smart types, and I can make something out of that." “Isn’t that just a little cynical?” “Not at all. Most people are beginning to realize that too much freedom means too much to think about. ‘What are those people doing? What do they mean by research? How will it affect me?’ It gets in the way of their personal lives, wondering what new things might be invented that they’ll have to worry about. They’re moving back to wanting us in control of their neighbors, and of their own personal and social lives. Most people are happier when someone else makes decisions for them anyway. It’s just a matter of time before they abandon the Liberty Party, and we just have to help them along.” Back in DC, Ernie listened intently. Well, that makes sense, he thought, soothing his already shrunken conscience. And for him, tax evasion wouldn't do it. Maybe he could find some scientific thing that his boss could turn into an issue. He remember reading how cloning freaked the populace back in the early years of the century. "I hear you have an industry that freezes people when they die. Think there's something in that?" "Naw, don't think so. Too local, and they've been doing that for many years. If I get a chance I'll send someone up to Caltech. Lot's of propeller-heads there. Maybe I can dig up something scary enough for you. But you'll owe me!" "No problem! If you can get something that'll get my boss going we'll both get a good ride on his coattails.” Don’t I know it! thought Hinterland, rubbing his sweaty hands in anticipation.

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Chapter 18 James met Sareena one last time in their classroom/diner by the sea, at her request. He was constantly amazed by a student who just couldn't get enough learning, who almost demanded 'teach me!' At school he was lucky if students showed up for class at all, and the only time they asked questions it was "what's going to be on the test?". He was used to the resentment directed at him for asking them to demonstrate their 'mastery' of trivial arithmetic. With Sareena he didn't need to administer tests; almost every session she had gone beyond his assignment down some side road of mathematics, just out of curiosity. Her proficiency was never in question. In fact, it was because of one of these side roads that she requested one more lesson before he temporarily relocated to Hong Kong. James had grown almost comfortable with this virtual interaction as he taught Sareena more and more of his mathematics. He still didn't think it would ever replace real face-to-face meetings; he missed the nuances that his MIVI interface didn't transmit or reproduce. But the process didn't seem as alien as it once did. He donned his headset and found himself sitting in the familiar diner, soda at the ready, waiting for his student. She arrived through the virtual front door shortly. "Hi James!" Sareena had to get comfortable calling her teacher by his first name, as much as he had to get comfortable with tutoring in NetSpace. She had adapted quickly however and showed characteristic eagerness to meet with her professor. James reflected how having just one exceptional student made up for all the hundreds of, frankly, dolts who play-acted at learning. Maybe this was more evidence of Jamie's ultimate bifurcation of humanity. Sareena had developed, on her own, a new technique for compressing the enormous numbers. It had come about from the patterns of coding programmers fall into; the algorithms, recursions and loops suggest almost a rhythm, a beat to code to. She had sensed such a beat in her assignments and had written a fledgling treatise on it. James studied this while Sareena sat quietly, sipping on a cherry soda, alternately looking at her teacher and the ocean. He realized that, although it would break down when applied to other mathematical problems, it was entirely suitable for this application. It was one of many peculiar short-cuts that occur when dealing with numbers, like rewriting the first two columns of a 3X3 matrix out to the right and multiplying diagonally to avoid the Method of Minors; it worked fine but only for a 3X3. This trick was different: it was new, as far as he knew, and it was developed by a fourteen-year old girl! And although the treatment was not rigorous if written by a PhD, it was remarkably mature coming from one so young.

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"Excellent Sareena, excellent," he said at last. "With a little work we could publish, once this project of Jamie's is done. I assume that peerreviewed journals will still be around then." Sareena beamed at the praise. Publishing a paper with James for all the world to see! The kids at school wouldn't understand, but they didn't understand much anyway. "You really think so? I mean about the paper?" "Sure! Your ideas aren't that much less sophisticated than my first papers, and I didn't start publishing until I was around thirty. Like I say, we have to wait until this big project is over, but I can see the implementation of your ideas in our work. It's time to start on the new stuff, the math I've been working on for the past six weeks. I can't really do it here in this cyberdiner. Well, I could I guess, but I wouldn't like it." Sareena sat sipping on her soda. In all her lessons she had been respectful, eager but focused on her lessons. Now she asked, "James, do you have a girlfriend?" James was taken aback by the question, but didn't show it. "No, not for a while." "Why?" A touchy subject, especially when talking to a child. A very mature girl, but barely out of childhood. "Because most girls don't seem to be impressed by thinking as by other things. I don't know..." The nonsequitor question and the subject matter caught him off guard and it showed. Sareena picked up on it. "Oh. Sorry." "Not a problem," he said. Best to stick to math. "Do you think you're ready for the hard stuff?" "Ouch! This was hard enough! You guys got a lot of faith in me." "I'll let you in on a secret. Most of my undergraduate students, and even some of my grads, don't understand as much as you do. And I'd bet none could have been brought up to speed so quickly. And coding all this math from scratch as well? As they used to say back in the day: 'fahget aboudit'." "Well, thanks. I'll do my best. I think I've reached the end of what I can hand-code though. Once I learn a little about your new theories, I think I'll have to use an evolving program. I'll set up some digital DNA based around your math and some animal parameters, like a shark. You know, something that evolves to do just one thing. Then we'll see what happens." Sareena paused for a minute. "I like smart guys," she said hopefully, "most of the boys at my school are awful dumb though. But there must be some bright men like you in the world." James laughed at the use of the word 'men' by such a young girl. "Men, huh? Well, I know I can't be the only smart man in the world! Think

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of Billy, for one; he's a brilliant engineer and a great musician." James reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure you'll run into a boy your age who can keep up with you." "Well, maybe." Wow! He was touching her! She struggled not to show her excitement. "There are some guys online who are pretty smart; but not as brilliant as you!" James dissembled. "Give 'em time." He gently removed his hand; Sareena hide her disappointment by changing the subject. "One guy in NetSpace was telling me that there are people in the States who want to blow up the asteroid with nuclear weapons. Have you heard anything about this?" James thought for a moment, about all he had read of nuclear weapons, of what he knew about the Physics of asteroidal impacts, and of what Jamie had said at that first meeting. “Naw, I don’t think that anyone with any political power would be foolish enough to resurrect those monsters from the 20th Century. Maybe if they were assembled in space—no, not even then. Too dangerous, and probably not efficacious.” “Effy kay shous?” “Useful under these circumstances. It looks like it’s up to us, or some other friends of Jamie trying something different.” He finished his cola, still amazed that it had taste, more amazed that is never made him pee. “So, you keep working on your programs. I have some things to clean up in the US. And don’t lose that thesis you’ve written! I’m serious; when this thing is over we’ll get it published.” As James waved good-bye walking out the virtual door wheels started to turn in Sareena’s head.

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Chapter 19 What my boss needs, thought Ernie Martirez, is a dragon to slay, just like King Arthur. (The fact that real dragons never existed and that, even in legend the son of Uthor Pendragon never encountered such a monster, didn't occur to him, product of government schools that he was.) All those Knights of the Round Table, including those who opposed Arthur, were suitably impressed when he presented them with the beast's head. This was exactly what he needed, something to first scare the pants off the populace, then be saved by Doltman's crusade. Even better, another Crusade, just like the king of Avalon! Ernie's Uncle Al had done some digging, snooped around a bit, called in a favor or two, and had emailed him the name of a dissatisfied employee at CalTech. This woman had for many years been very influential in the hiring (never firing) of employees. How Ginny Cesar had risen to a position of power with only a degree in Physical Education was never scrutinized, for those were the times of political correctness, and such an inquiry could be, would be labeled racist, sexist, elitist, or some other Ist administrators were terrified of. For years she controlled the interview process. Ginny delineated who would be invited, who could be on the screening committee, what training they needed to have to be in the committee, who could ask what question when--essentially lording over the whole process. She even had the President's ear and recommended candidates based on the melanin content of their skin, or if they lacked a Y chromosome. As a result, for some time, certain programs at CalTech suffered greatly, even bringing down the wrath of the California Accreditation Board onto the school. When it was discovered that Ginny had been "enhancing for clarity's sake" the resumes and supporting letters for certain applicants, plagiarizing papers and forging signatures, the school reassigned her to another, far less powerful position--she couldn't, as a union employee, be fired--and slowly repaired the damage of no-merit based hiring. So Ms. Cesar, a diminutive and prunish woman given to too much make-up, had fumed in the maintenance department for many years, and was now approaching retirement. She didn't want to just fade away without so much as a whimper however; oh no, she was going to raise some hell on those insensitive elitist bastards who hired faculty on the basis of--gasp!-experience and intelligence. She had spent years digging up dirt on ever project, every professor and researcher of whom she hadn't approved, and she had a big file. She understood very little of what anyone was doing there at CalTech, but it sounded important and highbrow, and she was sure it wasn't socially sensitive. But what to do with this dirt?

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Her chance came when a friend of the brother of a colleague who knew an ex-assistant to a former councilman of Santa Monica who was reported to have a nephew who was a staffer to an important congressman rumored that he (one Ernie Martirez) was looking for just such dirt. She received word via this rather tenuous grapevine that if some suspicious activity at CalTech were to be reported to the proper authorities certain politicians would be very grateful and could arrange a small honorarium for fulfilling her civic duty. All this and revenge too! She couldn't let this opportunity slip by. In all her years at CalTech, in power and in shame, she had built up a network of a few fellow employees (workers might be too strong a term) disenchanted with their position. Their union assured them of increasing wages for decreasing responsibilities, and in truth most of this small but vocal group lived quite well and didn't have much reason to complain. A few however were always going to bitch about something, always resentful of people who had more than they: in short, typical supporters of Al Hinterland. It was at a union-mandated employee self-esteem workshop and retreat in Big Bear that one such malcontent muttered to Ginny about his burden of a weekly software backup (his only real task, under union rules) for that damned research team up in the Owens Valley. What the hell could they be working on up there that was so important that they required weekly backups? Something about getting energy from nothing at all. Bullshit! Probably doing nothing but running off to Mammoth to ski or fish, giving him make-work so that it seemed like they're very busy. To Ginny the very idea that power could come from nothing, from empty space, sounded like a scam some pointy-headed scientists would use on the under-represented to keep them oppressed. This was something to check up on! She knew she couldn't understand any of the alleged theories, but she knew that politicians like Hinterland were real smart; all she had to do was to get access to this information to the former councilman. He could pass it on to Martirez, making sure that he knew the source and who deserved the credit (and the honorarium). Thus Ernie came to learn about ZPEXRL (sounded like a code word to him, something to use later) and the reason it was being built. He knew about the potential lunar impactor, but he thought that would happen after the next election and therefore was below his personal radar. So what if the Moon got another crater? It was riddled with holes anyway. There was only a tiny research staff there, and they could be evacuated long before that thing hit. Might even wreck that waste of private investment capital up there anyway. However, the fact that some scientists were worried about the strike did interest him. Scientists were always thinking about things most

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normal people didn't care about. But the news reports had been picking up on this a little. Also, some military brass had expressed opinions on that big flying rock, privately, and on a few talk shows. If he could work this impact issue into something big, like his father's generation had worked that Global Warming stuff, and if he could think of some governmental solution to this "problem", something expensive, something with many potential political favors and kickbacks--well! His boss would rocket to the forefront of the Republicratic Party with Ernie tagging along close behind. There might even be something in it for his uncle. Hinterland could make political hay out of a shift in public opinion away from scientists and their foolishness. Uncle Al could easily start an inquiry into those women he mentioned--tax evasion, ordinance violation, something--that could get him back into office where he could do some good for regular folks. It was time for Ernie to make a proposal to his Congressman, a suggestion with just enough information to fire up his boss while making him think it was his idea in the first place (without cutting out his staffer). Time to make connections, to spread rumors, to leak stories that would crank up the fear factory. Start with the tabloid press, then progress to exposé programs on the cable channels. "Unregulated science threatens the masses", that was the angle. Only the government could help you. Deregulation of their lives had been a burden for them. “Put government back in control and it'll take care of you.” The Republicrats need to regain power. He would also clandestinely propose to the major news network people that their time would come again if they got on board early. Decentralization of power had made them almost superfluous, and the old network anchors could become powerful allies. Scientists had done much to displace them, too, what with instant access to unfiltered information and news. Yes, this could work, thought Ernie. A sly smile crept onto his face, as he slicked his hair back. Leaning back in his soft government chair, feet on his overly neat oak desk, he said aloud, “Arthur, I think I’ve found you a dragon.”

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Chapter 20 Jamie and Kathryn's first long 'trip' was to visit Billy, who had returned to Santa Cruz after visiting his lady friend in LA. Such a long excursion required planning; Kathryn was so simpatico with Jamie that their bodies' natural rhythms were synchronized. It was the boardinghouse effect to the extreme, and even though only Jamie was really traveling Kathryn had to plan as if she were too. She was immobile while hitchhiking (to minimize external input) so she had to plan for her various needs: eating, sleeping, "the call of nature", and the demands of hygiene. Her brain could be fooled by the telemetry from Jamie that often reported that such needs were satisfied, so she had to prepare. Boy, she thought, when this little side project is over it'll be a huge letdown. After her initial uncertainty she'd grown accustomed to the co-existence, and the few times Jamie had left to handle some business Kathryn missed it terribly. She'd been doing this hitching thing for just over a month, but she was forgetting what it was like to be alone. Early on Wednesday Jamie took the mag-train up the coast to Santa Cruz: extravagant but much more enjoyable that driving or flying. Geothermal and co-generation plants along the coast provided the levitation power for the popular conveyance, built about ten years earlier by a large international consortium. The autoroads that were beginning to spring up in metropolitan areas had yet to extend much beyond the cities, so those who preferred ground transport (and could afford it) took the magtrain. It moved swiftly along the western slopes of the coastal range, and the route occasionally offered views of the Pacific, gray from its winter storms. She was staying only the day for Kathryn's sake; Jamie didn't receive feedback from her hitchhiker, but she was always cognizant of her presence, more than just intellectually. Billy's house was close to the new station, and he and his beau Leigh met Jamie in his truck. "What? The three of us won't fit on your bike?" Jamie joked as they piled into the old 4X4--the winter rains made motorbiking a damp experience. This truck must feel abandoned during the Summer, she thought, as Billy's preference for his 'heavy iron' was clear. "Nah, I gotta keep this battery charged somehow. 'Sides, the roads are kinda slick around here this time of year. Jamie, this is Leigh. Leigh, this is Jamie, the weird woman I've told you about." "Weird hmm? Thanks a lot, Billy! Hi Leigh!" Jamie sized up Leigh and deduced that this was the calmer and cooler of Billy's girlfriends and less likely to give him grief about working closely with another woman. She wondered if Amanda even knew about this project. Leigh was tall and lean with outrageously long legs, a mixture of descendants from several continents. Friendly and moderately bright, apparently. Billy was

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not the type of man to date bimbos, but he also was the type of man who needed to feel smarter than his women. After all, he was smarter than 98% of the people on this planet, so the pool of females smarter than he was quite small. They bumped along in the venerable old truck up the hill towards the house. Billy kept a neat if Spartan house with a view of the ocean, although he was not strictly on the beach. Some long-gone self-taught architect had built the home during the 60s of local wood. It had two stories organically hugging the slope and was encased by wild coastal foliage. Few pieces of furniture graced its rooms. His workspace was the largest part of the house, echoing a passing indulgence with the feng shui art of positioning, equipped with the latest, the absolute latest, tools of his trade, as well as some vintage gear and prize basses. This was Jamie's third visit to his house, and every time she visited he had some new analyzer, integrator, or signal processor. It was a tribute to Billy's expertise that he could not only keep up with, but master each new piece of technology in his field, and apply it to the task at hand in little more time than it took to unpack it. Today however, because of Leigh's presence, the three sat on his deck, propane heaters burning, talking and drinking smoothies. After a bit Leigh, who had been sitting quietly, got up and excused herself. Jamie decided to drop her bombshell. "Kathryn's hitching with me today." Billy's eyes went wide. "Really? Are you in there Kathryn?" Jamie laughed. "Now you know it's a one-way communication! She can't answer you, but she's feeling these words in her mouth, so if I say 'Hi Billy! How're you doing?' it's almost like she's saying it." "Man, that's spooky! You know, when you had this crazy idea I went along with it 'cause it sounded like something interesting to do, not because I thought it would actually work, at least like this. So she's hearing everything we say?" "Yep, and everything I see, taste, every bump in that road up here, even smelling Leigh's Chantilly. She even knows that I'll have to excuse myself to the little girl's room in a few minutes, when Leigh gets back." Billy thought for a moment. "You know, I wouldn't tell Leigh about this. Man, it's just too weird, even for you." "Gee, thanks." "Aw, you know what I mean. I don't think I'd tell anyone when you're doing this. It's too much like being bugged." Jamie saw Billy's point and had to agree. When Billy's girlfriend returned she excused herself as planned. (Planned was the word, for back in Burbank Kathryn unplugged and took care of business herself.) Later, after they had all talked each other out and the day had waned, hunger became an issue. Rather than make Billy cook, which he did very well,

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they decided to head into town for dinner. Jamie had planned to return to Burbank that night, but she was having such a good time with the couple that she accepted Billy's invitation to stay the night. Kathryn of course knew this as well, and she decided to unplug after a while to reclaim her individuality. However, she hung on until after dinner. She still found it incredible to feel like you'd finished a delicious meal, yet not consumed anything. What a diet plan! although dieting was never a necessity with her slim figure. Curiosity got the better of her after a while, though, and she reconnected with Jamie after an hour’s rest. After dinner the trio went to a local club to listen to some music and dance a bit. The music was performed by a holographic construct of a group from the 1980's and recordings from the period. The group's appearance changed to match the music: the Clash played Punk, Duran Duran played New Wave, and Van Halen played power pop. It was a testament to the times that too few were able to play music well enough to assemble a listenable cover band. Billy and Leigh danced a lot; with his impeccable sense of rhythm he was easily the best dancer on the floor. Leigh was no slouch, though, and her wispy figure complemented Billy's wiry contortions. Later Jamie was coerced into dancing, something she wasn't keen to do. It took the music of Oingo Boingo--Billy's request--to move her to her feet. After that Phil Collins played a ballad and Billy danced a slow dance with Jamie, who had to whisper "let Leigh see a little daylight between us please" to the rakish engineer. She deduced that his closeness was half testosterone, half a barb aimed at Leigh to force her to assert her territory later. A clever man! Jamie spent the night in Billy's guesthouse, a small bungalow behind the main house. Typically, he had it filled with gear, but Leigh helped her move enough stuff out of the way to make it livable. After breakfast the next morning she took the train back to Burbank alone, meaning Kathryn hadn't hitched along. She hadn't spent much time at home the last few weeks and had to do a little housekeeping. Jamie needed a day of rest also, so eager as they were, the two decided to meet the following day to compare notes. "What a wolf!" said Kathryn as she greeted Jamie in the studio the next morning. "I can see why the ladies go for him." "What? Oh, so you were connected during the slow dancing!” Jamie grinned. “You know, he made the Boingo request to get me up there. I'll bet he arranged that slow dance too. Sneak!" "It was amazing though, riding along. The train, that bumpy truck of his. I felt sweaty when you--we--danced. I could smell the BBQ sauce from the ribs on his breath, and could tell he was getting turned on when

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we slow-danced. Wow! Maybe we could, you know, do it with somebody?" Jamie went ashen. "No, Kathryn, I can't be a Body Double for you," she said slowly, "That would be the ultimate kiss-and-tell. I couldn't do that. Besides, you might not like my choice of partners. We best stay clear of that. Kinky idea though." The former ecstasy guide immediately understood what she had just asked her friend. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I just realized... I mean...that would be a terrible invasion of privacy." “Not at all." Jamie leaned over and hugged her girlfriend. "I feel I know you so well that I can share almost anything with you. Almost anything. I do need a few spaces only I can go," she laughed. They spent the day debriefing and refining the hitchhiking equipment, for their next big excursion was to the Breakfast Pizza Colloquium. This time Jamie didn't let Kathryn hitch while she was traveling to Virginia; only after she was driving the van along the road did she allow her hitchhiker to thumb a ride. When questioned about this Jamie just smiled, and Kathryn recognized that this was one of those spaces of privacy Jamie referred to. As per Billy's advice Jamie did not reveal her passenger to James. They later both admitted to each other that they felt a little guilty about this, Kathryn less so. "Well, that was interesting. James' pizza confection was good!" The two were relaxing at the studio, watching TV and going over their reactions to their second excursion. It had been two weeks since Jamie returned from Virginia, but much busy-ness had delayed anything more than a cursory discussion until now. "I'm still amazed that I can taste everything you eat. I think the more we use the Thumb the better it gets." "That makes sense, on two levels. The more you use any tool the better you get at it. But it also says that you’re moving toward being able to do this for real, without technology. The rest of the team will follow in your footsteps. And you thought you were out of your league with Billy and James!" Kathryn blushed. "Thanks. You know, Billy might be the ladies man, but James is sweet. Will we ever work together? I mean, does his part in this ever mesh with mine?" "So! You do like James," said Jamie, "you don't hide it very well. Well, he's a fine boy, but probably different from men you've known. Always been kinda shy, more so lately. You see how reclusive he can be. He's not a pack animal like most men are. And yes, we will all be working together at some point." Kathryn sipped her coffee. "I really haven't known many men. Hah, it's sort of the opposite of the old biblical term. I've 'known' many

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men virtually through my old job, but gotten to know only Leon as a person. And we were never intimate. Maybe we could visit James again? I want to learn more about him, scope him out some more before I make my move. I take it he won't be making any moves himself." "No, he..." Jamie was distracted by something on the television. "In his present state of mind...he won't...shit! I was afraid of this."

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Chapter 21 "Vapidia Wallace is on assignment in the nation's capitol, covering events unfolding on the floor of the house." The newsman's demeanor had become suitably grave as he spoke of the centers of government. As with most newsmedia types, Fred Mamry was still nursing the wounds suffered when Liberty Party members achieved majority over statist politicians. These days Liberty Party members did very little in government other than untangling the web of intrusion woven by Republicrats for almost a century. This provided little for ambulancechasing media to cover; moreover, it demoted them from newsmakers to mere reporters. However, hope springs eternal, and whenever the strong Republicrat minority made a big push for some legislation, Fred, Vapidia, and their cronies were there, bursting with self-importance, ready to pour gasoline on any little spark of renewed state power. "Vapidia?" "Thank you Fred. In a moment minority leader Doltman from New York will make a speech in support of the Earth Defense Bill, which he's sponsored. As we've been reporting for the past few months, a wild asteroid is fast approaching our Moon, and the potential for problems here on Planet Earth are enormous. Fred, you yourself reported on the impending catastrophe a few months back. Then you mentioned that some secret group was working on some kind of super-laser. Congressman Doltman thinks this is not enough, and will propose...wait…we now take you to the floor of the House." Minority leader Bruce Doltman was a portly man, thinning white hair combed to cover the regions of his scalp where age spots were most noticeable. He had been in Congress since the turn of the century, and had trained his rubbery face reflect the expression du jour. Now his fleshy cheeks, narrow eyes, and quivering chins preached "Repent, the end is near!" "My fellow Americans. As individuals we are born with nothing, and we'll die taking nothing with us. As a country we came from nothing but have, in 250 years, achieved greatness, although in the past few years we may have lost ground." Doltman cast a telling glance at the majority leader Browne. "But all our striving will be for naught. All that we've built will be for nothing. All that we live for and believe and cherish will vanish forever, because, if we allow our Moon to be destroyed, as a race, we humans will have no future!" He paused to assess the impact of his sermon. The press was eating it up. Good! Time to crank it up a notch. "My sources tell me that, because of this collision, the tides will be so altered that life on Earth will be impossible. How can this be, you ask? As you may know, though I am

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not one to boast, I have training in the sciences, and I understand more than most the grave problem facing us. Let me explain." "The Moon, our satellite, exerts a force called gravity on all water on the Earth. That is why we have tides in the ocean. You probably are familiar with the term "tidal wave"; that is when the Moon pulls extra hard on certain oceans, causing waves of mass destruction. What you probably don't know is that your own human body is made up of mostly water, about 80%. Therefore, a collision on the Moon will have grave consequences for us and for our children." "This do-nothing government of the past two decades has left us defenseless. This Laissez-Faire approach to life, this denial of the wisdom of your leaders and their ability, their right to watch over their citizens, will doom us." "What is our fate? What will happen to you, your families, your loved ones?" Doltman paused again; the Republicrat minority held its collective breath, and the newsmedia were on the edge of their seats. What the Congressman from New York said next might just start them on the road back into power. If he spoke eloquently enough, if he could scare the masses enough, if...here it comes: "Anarchy, my friends! Anarchy, my fellow Americans! This loss of control, this virulent deregulation, this unchecked lunge toward civil liberty, this unrestrained dismantling of the Federal Establishment will doom us to anarchy! When the Moon is hit by this asteroid, the effect on humanity will one of wild loss of control. Rioting in the streets, madness in our schools and churches, civil disobedience, even open warfare will ensue because of the change in our natural body tides. Ask your local policepersons about the havoc they see during a full moon, when tides are high. Madness, my friends, madness and anarchy will be our apocalypse." "Why do they call madness lunacy? The fact that the word lunacy has a synonym--Moonstruck--isn't coincidence. Our Moon has been hit before, and we've seen the result: the dark ages and the rise of paganism and witchcraft. But we now know the scientific reason for these gross social aberrations. When, after a strike on the Moon, the tides change, our water balance is disrupted, creating disturbances in our brain which take years to recover from." "Yes, we know the reason. And we can predict our future. Can we change it? Can we defend our Mother Earth and her children? I say YES!" Thunderous applause erupted from the press corps, set up behind the Congressional Minority Caucus, who whooped support for their leader as loudly as any sports fan cheered for the home team hero. Chants of "Dolt-man! Dolt-man!" echoed through the hall while the Liberty Party majority looked at each other in half bemused/half alarmed consternation.

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The individual freedom they had advanced was under constant danger of being whittled away by emotional appeals from “Nanny”. When the cacophony died away the Congressman continued; "We still, as our legacy from the last century, have enough destructive power to blow up that cursed asteroid before it ever strikes our orbiting sister. I myself chair the committee in charge of our own mothballed weapons. The many more nuclear warheads still in armories around the world, and the knowledge to quickly build more, can bring the planet's atomic strike force up to sufficient strength to blast the Moon-killer from the skies. And we still have plenty of missiles to deliver the knockout punch to the target. Rockets tagged for research can be confiscated and reassigned to this important mission. We can defend ourselves; we can save the future!" More cheers from the minority party and their press corps. They could almost feel the reins of power back in their hands. Way-to-go Doltman! "Some scientists," he sneered, "will tell you that this is a dangerous plan. They'll tell you that there aren't enough bombs in the Universe to get the job done. They'll say that such weapons should be destroyed for all time. They want your children to die in the coming social madness! I say, to Hell with them!" More cheers. "My sources in the military assure me that there will be plenty of explosives available, that they are perfectly safe, and that they can get the job done. I don't trust those pointy-headed types to presume to know more about explosives than our boys in uniform. Do you want to trust your lives, and the lives of your children, to a bunch of academics? Where were they when Nazism and Communism threatened us? Were they on the front lines, dying for our government, our way of life? Never!" Even more applause this time. Doltman grew quiet, then almost whispered, "We must do this thing for our Mother, the Earth, and her children, all her children, and all our children. We cannot leave our fate to elitist scientists, intellectuals, and effete snobs who espouse personal freedom and eschew government control." More loudly, "I ask that you write or call your representative, senator, and our do-nothing president today and demand that they give us the power to protect you and save the Earth. I am not ashamed to beg this of you." Now, nearly shouting, fully evangelical, "Indeed, I say loudly and proudly, speaking for all my Republicrat colleagues, that we are from the government and we are here to help you!" _______________________________________________ James had stopped over in San Francisco on his way to visit the Zero-Point Potential Generator at Cal Berkeley when, in the airport, he heard Doltman's tirade. So this is what Sareena had heard about, more

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frightening than her report had indicated. He was incredulous at the gross scientific fallacies and historical distortions purported in that speech, but he fully understood how decades of educational decline would cause such horribly wrong ideas to be readily accepted by Everyman and EveryWoman. It took time to extract the tendrils of government from the schools, more time than had elapsed since Liberty Party revolution of 2016. And virtually all voters had been educated in the state schools that had dominated education for 130 years. The decline in critical thinking skills had started around 130 years ago as well; gee, a connection? he thought wryly. Fortunately, from around the turn of the century, freedomminded activists had wisely chosen to appeal to the voters' emotions instead of their intellect, resulting in the Liberty Party win. But appealing to the emotions was exactly what Congressman Doltman had done; what damage could he and his specious policies inflict? He did a back-of-the-envelope calculation from the asteroid numbers as he remembered Jamie giving him back at that first meeting, and concluded that he could think of nothing more dangerous than that much explosive energy on top of hundreds of rockets. Except maybe the loss of the Moon itself. But would this crazy scheme even get the job done? He'd have to consult with Jamie on that. For now he had to get on to Cal Berkeley and the LBL. Dr. Vong was a very attractive woman, tall for an Asian, almost athletic in stature, and certainly very young to head one of only a few ZPPG installations on the planet. She had been alerted that James would be dropping by; even though he was not directly involved with the technology, he needed some sense of what would eventually be taking place. Typical of her cultural heritage Dr. Vong dropped all she was doing and gave James in VIP treatment, answering all his questions, not rushing him through like some gaping tourist as she led him through the Lawrence Berkeley Labs. The ZPPG was quite impressive. Since Zero Point Potentials and dark energy had been first postulated late in the last century much progress had been made. (This certainly seemed to bear out Jamie's explanation that once a new addition to reality is conceived it is implemented and accepted by those who can understand it.) It could tap the unlimited energy reserves locked in the fabric of space-time itself, in the process altering its curvature and topology. Man, hooking Billy's equipment into this technology would be wondrous! But what a job! Later that day Billy drove up to Berkeley to meet with James. They had spent much time on the phone, well, as much time as men are likely to, and relished the opportunity to talk in person. The scientists had a long, intense, bonding kind of discussion only guys can have as they walked around the campus. Billy had already met Dr. Vong and gotten the

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I/O specs, not that he could do much with them until Sareena got the drivers. But he could start to match protocols between the ZPPG interface and MIVI; he was loathe to sit around idle. It was a remarkably fruitful time for the two men. Whatever Billy didn't understand about the theory James explained; things about the technology the mathematician couldn't grasp the engineer cleared up for him, and the two collaborated synergistically on the role the ZPPG would play in this project. Billy remembered that Jamie predicted this would happen, that the intellectual connection would be musical, for lack of a better term. He couldn't wait until all of them were jamming this way. Much later, long after the sun had disappeared behind the Golden Gate, he convinced James to go to a bar he knew well from his grad school days, one where intellectual involvement was not the primary form of entertainment. The mathematician was resistance, but Billy was nothing if not persuasive. Suffice to say that James was out of his element whereas Billy was immersed in his. After a while he sat in with the blues band in residence, losing himself in an old Elmore James song; this focused James out of his bewilderment, at least until one of the local 'ladies' slid next to the mathematician and started speaking in advanced Innuendo. With a silly grin on his face (and four shots of Sauza tequila in his brain) James seemed to be enjoying the company of the woman who called herself Freyda. But from the stage Billy was observing the situation, and after the latest tune had finished he excused himself and collared his friend. "Jimmy," he whispered conspiratorially, "Freyda's not all the woman she appears to be!" "Humm?" he grunted, not turning away from the woman. "You're gonna be in for some changes, man!" Then Freyda stood up and gave Billy a dirty look. "Aw Billy, you ruined the surprise!" she said in a strong baritone that shook James out of his stupor. Billy grabbed him and dragged him from the club. The two started laughing uncontrollably, practically crawling to Billy's truck. He gave James a lift back to the airport motel where he was staying until the flight to Hong Kong left, which gave the professor time to sober up enough to find his room card. The men shook hands in a complicated fashion Billy started, some secret code or something, and they parted, eager for the project. Both had forgotten the tirade from the floor of the House earlier that day, but events would soon bring it back into their consciousness.

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PART III

Chapter 22 Some seeds take years to germinate. They lie dormant in the soil, quietly counting the march of seasons, awaiting that exact set of conditions that will trigger explosive growth. Such was the seed of fear and resentment that lay quiescent in the subconscious of the general populace for decades. From seniors who still believed that Buzz and Neil faked their flight back in '69, to young adults who understood nothing about the technology they used daily, EveryMan merely accepted that which science did for them. It was, on the surface, an amiable half-duplex situation: science gave and the masses took. But all that time, from Edison to Gates and beyond, distrust in things not understood had persisted. Rather than indulge their curiosity and learn about Physics, Chemistry, Biology, most people staunchly defended their right to remain ignorant, with great and widespread success. Easier to believe in mythologies that promised great rewards for little investment. Lotteries were ubiquitous, psychics had opened storefronts in every neighborhood, and the mainstream media fed their viewers a steady diet of implausibilities. The exact set of conditions for the seed to sprout had occurred for Congressman Bruce Doltman all the way down to Candidate for Burbank Mayor Al Hinterland. Doltman's speech to Congress, put into heavy rotation by the various sycophantic news anchors and pundits, had forced fear of science to bloom. _____________________________________ About a week after Doltman’s infamous speech James was in Hong Kong tutoring Sareena. They were about done; the child prodigy programmer had developed first generation drivers for Billy's MIVI gear that surpassed anything anyone had seen before. It was as if James' Exalogs had ignited something in the girl. Sareena coded constantly, instinctively, developing software without any bugs at all, unheard of in the history of programming. Her drivers would push the bounds of what MIVI could do, if supplied by the power of a ZPPG. That was Billy's task: to interface his equipment with such a device that Mobius Space was just a synapse away. That particular synapse would be supplied by Kathryn, who was hitching with Jamie as she flew on a hypersonic plane to Hong Kong. It was quite evident to even an intensively focused mathematician such as James that Sareena had developed an enormous crush on her tutor. He was not at all experienced in dealing with teenagers, even though many,

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most, of his adult students acted like adolescents. And Sareena was certainly more mature than most teenagers, in her dedication, ambition, abilities, and socialization. But there was no doubt that she was, tentatively, flirting with him. There is something marvelously innocent about a young person in love, virginal yet having nothing to do with sex, he thought. That first time when you have no preconceptions or experiences to taint the feeling. You've never been rebuffed, cuckold, or otherwise shat upon, all those things that cause your guard to muffle the feeling of infatuation. What to do about it, though? James was certainly not a pedophile, yet he truly did like and admire Sareena. She would grow up to be quite a woman, especially if this Greater World thing was a fact. He decided he should treat Sareena with kindness and respect, but not encourage her or play on her emotions. It also might be best if they were not alone together. That would be easy; soon she would have the preliminary software finished for Billy, and they would all be working as a team. James remained friendly yet decently distant to her, and she didn't seem to mind. Sareena spent every free minute with him, often in the presence of her mother, with whom James got along famously. Why not? Here was a world-class mathematician who had traveled halfway around the world to privately tutor her daughter! The cover story from Jamie had convinced her that this was a good thing--a privilege, an honor--but not suspicious. And she knew her daughter was smitten, but she trusted them both. Jamie landed at Chek Lap Kok and took the new MTR to Kowloon. For Kathryn, clandestinely hitching along (they still resolved not to tell anyone), it was like closing a loop; this whole adventure had started with a walk in Kowloon Park. And she was about to meet this young girl James had been gushing over, really for the first time. Kathryn wasn't sure how she felt about this. She had not confessed this to Jamie, but she had begun to have erotic dreams about the mathematician. Erotic dreams in and of themselves were odd for her. Kathryn's career as a sexual surrogate had, rather than expand her libido, actually turned her off to sex in the flesh. The desperate control her (mostly male) clients needed to exert on their partners, their pitiful reliance on sex for fulfillment, the dark corners of repression that hid in their minds, had shut down her own desires for years. That and the fact that she and Leon had had a wonderful relationship without intimacy for a decade reinforced her distaste for coitus. But as with many women in their thirties, Nature plays a dirty trick. Call it a sense of personal freedom, a self-confidence that comes with age, or some quirk of reproductive biology that says "time's a' wastin'": women in their fourth decade become boys in their second, at least as far as

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sex goes. Cruel joke, because it's this time in their lives that men loose a sustained interest in intimacy, sort of a "been there, done that" malaise that sets in. Sex deteriorates from an obsession to merely an itch to scratch, at least in most men, leaving their spouses much chagrinned. Kathryn had been away from her job for several months now, away from men in general. She had spent so much time with Jamie that her needs for companionship, for someone to talk to and to share with, had been handsomely met. Jamie wasn't like most women she knew; she understood so much about Kathryn without being girly about it. And once the hitch-hiking started, the sensation of knowing someone right down to their physical responses to stimuli was almost like being in a deeply romantic relationship. Almost. For while she had by now hitched many times, she needed that which her hormones demanded; a sexual relationship. James was the only man she had met in the last few months, other than Billy. Her mathematician (she was thinking possessively of him now, even if she had only been near him via Jamie) was not like her clients. He was not desperate, not controlling, anything but pitiful; didn't even seem interested in sex. Well, she would change that! But how did he feel about her? Moreover, how did she feel about Sareena? The girl plainly had a crush on James; even the occasional video calls she made to Jamie couldn't hide that. Just the way she uttered "James" said it all. And he couldn't possibly think about the girl in that way, he was too decent a fellow. At the same time, Kathryn saw something of herself in Sareena, something that reminded her of her teenage years and the naiveté she had had before the realities of life weighed so heavily on her. This was going to be an interesting meeting she thought as she lay on the couch back in the Burbank studio, simultaneously riding the train to Kowloon. _______________________________________________ Jamie had decided to physically rather than virtually travel to Hong Kong to meet with the teacher and his student. Partly because she had to convince Sareena's mother to let her daughter continue her studies at Berkeley, where she was setting up shop, partly because she was so concerned about this rapid change in public opinion fanned by Doltman and his ilk. The former task alone was difficult enough. It was little more than halfway through the year at Sareena's school, not enough time had elapsed to lend the proper air of opportunity to this extraordinary education the girl was receiving, and besides, her mother needed her to help with the family business. Add to this that California was still far away, even in 2032, especially for a teen-ager.

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However, these problems paled compared to the political urgency now imposed on top of the impending lunar impact. For the first time in this project Jamie was not sure how to proceed, found it difficult to focus, a strange condition for her. She needed face-to-face input from James on the subject. She had already talked to Billy about Doltman and the antiintellectual mood once again flowing from DC. The engineer was too into the whole technology thing to think clearly about public relations; his opinion didn't help. Of course Kathryn shared her own thoughts and concerns, but what would James say? She didn't know, but she knew it would be important. Jamie felt unnaturally indecisive, almost of two minds. The train from the airport to Kowloon had always been swift, but ten years ago the steel rails had been replaced by a maglev system; now top speed was limited only by the acceleration comfort level of the passengers. Jamie's express arrived at the station fourteen minutes after leaving the enormous Chek Lap Kok. Sareena and her teacher met her on the busy platform and the girl ran to her with open arms. Startled, Jamie preemptively gave the teenager a "Hollywood hug", bending at the waist. Kathryn had once told her that was ostensibly to avoid wrinkling expensive gowns, but in actuality it was to avoid breast contact with people not on the "A" list. Besides, most Hollywood mammories were more silicone that flesh and subject to damage. However, why she had backed off a bit from Sareena's genuine affection mystified her: some forgotten reflex? With Sareena watching nonplussed Jamie turned to give James an embrace that had no trace of Hollywood in it. She felt relieved that he was here; he'd have a solution. However, it was James' turn to be startled, surprised by the warmth of her hug. Despite the fact that Jamie was a number of years his junior, he'd come to think of her as an aunt. But there was more overt femininity about her today. What was up? He gently pulled away and the three stood there on the platform for an awkward moment. Finally Jamie shook herself and said, "Well! I..." She found she needed a minute to center herself. Teacher and student watched in barely concealed amazement as a visible change came over the woman. A shiver overcame her suddenly, and after a moment Jamie exclaimed, "Man! That flight must have gotten to me. Never did like public transportation much. But you'd think I'd be used to it after all these years. Anyway, how are you both doing? Sareena, did you expect that cute boy again? Wouldn't be fair to James here; I don't have my van." This time she winked and bent down to gave the teenager a decent hug, which seemed to placate her. She straightened. "James, my lad," --now that sounded like the old Jamie-- "your reports on your student's progress indicate that we can go on

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to the next phase. While you've been here this past week Billy has found a studio in Berkeley near the school and started assembling the outboard gear. It's near enough to the ZPPG to tap into the output and far enough to avoid curious students. Kathryn will stay in Burbank for a while..." "Don't we need her in Berkeley with us?" James interrupted. "...yes dear, but not until the equipment is ready and Sareena's programs are loaded. Be patient my boy. She's got things to pack up first." She picked up her bag; "Let's get to the hotel; we've important matters to discuss." They took a bus that careened through the crowded streets of Kowloon, safely depositing them at the New World Renaissance, right on the Promenade. From the hot and humid sub-tropical air they transitioned into the arctic cold typical of Hong Kong air-conditioning. Jamie had arranged a nice suite overlooking the busy harbor whose choppy waters were, as always, filled with liners, ferries, pleasure boats and junks. Across the harbor the Central District skyline knew no bounds, and several of the newer buildings challenged the Peak itself in reaching for the clouds. Must have cost her a bundle, he thought. Wonder what her accountant says. James and Sareena tried to relax in her sitting room as Jamie cleaned up from her trip, but were only partially successful. Only a few short months ago they knew nothing of Mentors, Greater Morlds, or lunar impactors, and now they were deep into a project that seemed to be steamrolling to fruition. What "fruition" actually meant they had only one clue between them; Sareena had some idea of what might be possible if they could roam free in Mobius Space. To James this was all just a fascinating research project with interesting people, and a welcome change from teaching students who complained about any "trick" (read: thoughtful) question he ever posed. And both were dying to find out what 'important matters' that would bring Jamie here in person. She had merely announced she would arrive on flight 88, characteristic of her mystery woman persona. Mystery Woman emerged from her room clean, re-coiffed and dressed more appropriately for the Hong Kong air-conditioning in a long skirt and a sweater. Her clothes said this was going to be a long meeting. Jamie knew from reports about Sareena's progress, but she wanted to see her revelation in person. With little prompting the girl explained her compression algorithm on a Cross tablet that could be downloaded into Jamie’s PDA. Not that it really mattered; Jamie was a Physicist, and not up on Exalog compression techniques. She was so busy that chances were she'd never examine it closely--she relied on James to do that. But as in any seminar, you smile politely, try to ask an intelligent question or two, and let the speaker have her moment in the Sun. Jamie did follow the idea for a while,

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but once the coding began she just listened quietly. The girl had definitely turned a corner in the past few months, she thought while she listened. Her natural math abilities had been nurtured by James' tutoring, and the challenge of the programming, rather than intimidate her, had spurred her onto greater intricacies in software composition. Sareena, once started, talked even more than most teenage girls, only she talked about coding instead of teen-idol “hotties”. She was clearly comfortable now with her grownup colleagues, and Jamie had to gently shut her off with some room service. They were munching on Dim Som when her phone beeped. She opened the case and was surprised to see a distraught Kathryn on the preview screen, nearly in tears. "Jamie, the shit's gone down sooner than you expected!"

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Chapter 23 Both James and Sareena could hear the panic in Kathryn's voice; Jamie unrolled the aux screen so they could all see. "Good grief dear, what's happened? I thought you were, ah, practicing with the gear?" "I was, but I had to jack out about an hour ago. Is that you James?" "Yes, hi, Kathryn..." "Oh, good, I'm so glad you're there…" Sareena uncharacteristically jumped in "Hi Kathryn!" Kathryn started. "Oh Sareena dear, you're there too? I didn't know. I'm sorry about my language..." Jamie interrupted, "That's alright, she's heard it before. Now what's happened?" "Are you all sitting down? This will take a while." _______________________________________ Money from the government is a wonderful thing, thought Al Hinterland. Zero accountability; any misuse could be hidden in layers of paperwork, and any earnest auditor could be bought off with a small percentage. No need to pay anything back. A free gift if there ever was one. Money from the government wasn't as forthcoming as it once was though, for two reasons: after those damn liberty-types got in, taxes dropped precipitously, leaving little to fight over. And they were tightwads to boot. But this whole thing Doltman instigated with his nephew had loosened up certain funds his party were sequestering in off-shore banks, and a little cash in the right place could get any operation going. From Dallas and Memphis to Watergate and Nicaragua to Waco and North Hollywood, black operations from both factions of the Republicratic Party were financed by untraceable funds. Eliminate a threat? Pay off the hitman. Break in? Hire a burglar. Traffic in drugs? Squash a rival? Demonize guns? Buy a TV network exec? All you need is cash. Yes, it'd become more difficult when so many such operations were revealed to the public eye by those damned libertarians, but Jane and John Q. Public have a very short attention span. There was always some hidden cash for whatever needed to be done, and Al needed some important things done to get back into power. Hinterland's campaign to make Enemies of the Common Man out of the intelligencia was to start with those women in Burbank. He knew through his sources that these scientists had purchased a lot of expensive technical equipment, yet were not producing anything; they hadn't started a company, weren't working for the state, and certainly weren't affiliated

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with any charity. They were doing something for themselves, obviously subversive, selfish elitists that they were. Or so he could portray them to his growing constituency of the ambition-challenged. For this portrayal Al needed evidence; he'd build his re-election issue around them and their crimes against the working class. The fact that the women had done nothing illegal wasn't a problem; he and his colleagues had copious experience concocting wrongs against society, wrongs against "the state", even wrongs against nature when no such wrong ever existed. He and his party had a history of provoking outrage in the general popular over the most trivial of issues, building enough emotional capital to win elections against any merely rational opponent. True, the personal-freedom individualists had won the day in 2016; however, people were still people, still easily fooled, still essentially sheeple. All Al and the Republicrats had lacked in recent years was a sufficiently incendiary public debate, and Doltman had started that ball rolling. To further the public distrust of educated types and intellectuals, soon-to-be elected Hinterland needed to break into this so-called laboratory of theirs. Search and seizure writs were hard to come by these days, but with a little money in the right judicial hands something could be scared up. Al found that, while the old Anti-Methamphedamine Bill from the last century had failed in Washington, some California State senators had snuck it through up in Sacramento (with seed money from the Party, of course). The bill allowed access to personal computer storage without a search warrant, ostensibly to "protect" citizens from the evil of drug labs. However, it had proven useful to any public employee who required unauthorized entry somewhere (you had to get to the computer first, right?). And what you examined along the way, well, that could provide a basis for an official search warrant later, maybe even an arrest. Maybe, if you play the game right, a false indictment. Hinterland had found his entry key. He paid for a judge to support him in this, gathered some muscle from the Burbank PD, and prepared his assault on the laboratory. With any luck they'd "stumble across" enough damning evidence to incite public outrage. And though asset forfeiture had been widely eradicated, Al could appropriate, evaluate, and liquidate their valuable equipment, cut the judge and attorneys in on the action, and add the remainder to his war chest. So when his surveillance team traced Jamie to the airport and onto a flight to Hong Kong, and when their heat sensors saw no trace of the other woman for several hours (Kathryn's equipment masked her IR signature), Hinterland and his squad broke into the studio. First they unplugged the phone in case it had been set to monitor the scene remotely. Then they proceeded to scan every storage disk and card, and started to

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dismantle the Thumb V1.0 gear that was stashed in an outer room. Jees, he thought, look at all this shit! Must be some statute somewhere to let me impound it. Oh, this was going to be good! All the while Kathryn was in another room and simultaneously standing in front of James, her palms growing sweaty, her heart racing. ________________________________________ Jamie had decided to go to Hong Kong only a couple of days ago. The fact that she could get a seat on the hypersonic so close to departure impressed the hell out of Kathryn, even on top of all the stroke her friend already demonstrated. She easily convinced Jamie to let her hitch along; only rarely these days did Jamie take a trip without Kathryn clandestinely going along for the ride (she did need some privacy). And the two women would often really travel together, no hitching involved, but this time they decided to make Hong Kong a distance trial. (There had not been a perceptible time-lag or data-loss from Jamie to Kathryn during the Breakfast Pizza Colloquium; Kowloon was over twice as far though.) Unbeknownst to Jamie, however, Kathryn really wanted to see James, but was still quite shy about her growing feelings toward him. Suppose he wasn't interested in her? She would be just too embarrassed if she gushed all over him but he backed away. He certainly seemed interested when they talked over the phone, but those calls were mostly business. So hitching was the best solution for now. Maybe Jamie would get some clues out of him about how he felt, if he was at all interested in her. She had to get him away from that little girl though. I can't ask Jamie to investigate either, she thought. Just have to hope for the best. All during the flight Kathryn found it difficult to hitch. Usually her own personality was subverted by the input from Jamie; this time her preoccupation with seeing James again interfered with the data stream. And when she vicariously met him (and that girl!) at the Kowloon station, Kathryn could barely contain herself. When she hugged him (via Jamie) she found all her muscles tightening, trying to hold him closer and closer so she could feel... Suddenly the link was broken and she found herself in the studio, staring up at a pudgy, slick looking man and two big heavily armed security thugs in police uniforms.

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Chapter 24 Billy knew something was up 500ms after Hinterland and his SS troops had invaded the studio. He and Jamie had set up a full-time link between Burbank and the new place in Berkeley, tied into the Thumb system and the phone line, should something go wrong (which never happened). They never expected foul play; even now the thought hadn't entered his mind. The com system was configured to find alternate routing should local access to the backbone go down; this would take all of 0.5 seconds, which is why Billy knew something had gone down when the "no-signal" tone played on his console. Normally he'd have ignored the warning and finished what he was doing, attending to the problem later. But he knew that the women were using the Thumb on this Hong Kong junket, testing for range, and perhaps they had found the limit. The place where he was in adapting the Berkeley ZPPG to his prototype MIVI (now Mobius Intraspace Virtual Interface) wasn't a point that he could just leave. These were delicate and complicated connections, and Billy wired and configured in the manner he played music: long, intricate, melodic, uninterruptible lines. For a moment he considered: there was no danger to Jamie and Kathryn in a malfunctioning link he decided. I’ll recheck the monitor in an hour or so. Dr. Vong turned out to be wonderfully cooperative in this venture Jamie had orchestrated. Despite her duties as chair of Advanced Quantum Studies, and her involvement with CalTech's ZPEXRL project, she always seemed to have time for him and his engineering. A good deal of mutual respect grew between them, and Billy learned a lot about Zero Point Potentials in a short time. He kept having to remind himself however that this was all real, that despite what Jamie said about these technologies and theories existing because of their authors' (and his) comprehension, he really had to work to understand the ideas and put it all together. He couldn't afford to obsess over the fact that it was because of the gestalt he was building with Dr. Vong, James, and the rest, that this Mobius Space device would actually function as advertised. Stick with the realities as I know them, he thought. Billy knew from some of his upper division Physics courses that energy from apparently empty space was a fact, stemming from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The exact energy density of space and its rate of change could not be known simultaneously, any more than the position and momentum of a particle could be precisely known. From these probability states energy could be accessed in huge quantities from tiny volumes that Dr. Vong called nodes. Not that energy alone was necessary for MIVI, nor was quantity a problem, not with the proliferation of fusion plants (and the

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matter/antimatter sources that were soon to come online). It was energy density that was required to fold the fabric of space in Mobius Manifolds. Energy warps space just as mass does, and higher concentrations of energy bend space more tightly. With the proper control devices space could be twisted into any topography desired; or at least Jamie theorized. Interestingly, heavy industrial-strength conduits for energy weren't required, since energy transport wasn't the problem: free space was literally everywhere, so tapping terawatts from the power grid was not a factor. But ZPPGs were extraordinarily expensive, and could produce a potential energy node within only about a kilometer from their main transducer. Right now Dr. Vong was transmitting a low-density node on Billy's workbench. He wasn't sure how his newly designed multi-channel analyzer/synthesizer/actuator, which looked like a miniature Tokamak, would manipulate the warpage formed around this point; that was for James' math and Sareena's drivers to do. And then they had to mate the interface to the device's processors. First though, they had to get the node correctly configured. And with it winking into existence tentatively in front of him, he couldn't drop everything and fix the Thumb link. The fledgling node was emitting low temperature blackbody radiation as a by-product, making it visible as a glowing ruby hovering about half a meter above Billy's test equipment. It was actually too small to see, but it was dense enough to curve its immediate volume of space and focus its rays, falsifying their intensity. Billy sampled its broadband luminosity and forwarded the data back to Dr. Vong who could calculate the warpage from the node's EM flux. Less than anticipated, she concluded. She had never projected the node so far from the transducer; that might account for some loss, but not all. She suggested an alteration to the receiver apparatus that took Billy about an hour to implement. On the second try the node's color had shifted a bit and was more orange than before. Improvement, but still a ways to go; Dr. Vong had predicted something like banana yellow for a point of this low energy density. Ultimately their node would emit very little radiation because the curvature in space it caused would fold light back into itself. There would be something akin to Hawking Radiation, but the node was not a singularity. Its warpage would be infinitely curved, its folds infinitely complex, its manifolds infinitely deformable, and the control of same infinitely difficult. Billy hoped that James and Sareena had developed software that could deal with near-infinities. The ball was temporarily in Dr. Vong's court, so he took a moment to check the Thumb link monitor. Still down. He tried calling the studio but got a busy signal, so he tried Jamie's personal phone. Busy also. They must be talking to each other, he decided. He then called the hotel where she was staying and left a message to call if anything was wrong.

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He had no idea just how wrong things had gotten.

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Chapter 25 In spite of the fact that these intruders were big and threatening, Kathryn wasn't scared; she was furious! How dare they break up that hug she was having with James! And why were they in her studio? Not burglars, she knew burglars didn’t wear uniforms. Oh, she was livid! "Who the hell are you, breaking into my place like this? What the fuck is going on??" The fat man, the obvious leader of this pack of dogs, smiled greasily and asked, "No need to be vulgar, young lady. Do you have a permit for this equipment, ma'am?" So confident in himself was he that he didn't even bother to give his name. But it was clear that the gears in his head were turning rapidly. "Permit? Permit for what?" she asked, recovering enough to realize that these men didn't need to know what she and Jamie were doing, even if they looked official. "Ms. Merrill," --so they knew her name!-- "We know you were previously employed at Exxstacy VR up until a few months ago. Regrettably, we were not able to shut down that filthy enterprise, since no actual physical contact was ever made between you and your, ah, clients. Besides, misguided public conciliation has made such establishments common. But EVR did have to have a permit. You and your colleague appear to be involved with your own version of that tawdry enterprise, and you don't have any permit on file. Therefore, I'll have to impound your equipment until you submit the proper paperwork." The fact that the premise upon which Hinterland had based his break-in, and the premise for his confiscation of the equipment had no relationship, was irrelevant. He was overjoyed with the discovery that he could now add immorality to the crime of intelligence that he would accuse the women of. Kathryn was stunned. She couldn't explain to this man (come to think of it, he does look familiar) that there was no NetSex going on here, and she knew nothing about any permit or license requirements; she had only worked for EVR and had nothing to do with the running of the company. This man must be some moralistic old-school governmentalist, with the force of some regulatory bureau on his side. She was helpless! Without preamble Hinterland unplugged several of the computers and handed them to his goons, who ferried them outside to a truck. They proceeded to tear into the Thumb 2.0, ripping wires from their plugs, but when he approached the 3.0 gear, the interface module to her implants, Kathryn pushed him aside and disconnected the equipment herself. No sense letting him destroy it in his clumsiness; maybe Jamie could reclaim it later.

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Finally they left without another word. Thankfully they didn't try to arrest me on some piss-ant bogus charge, she thought. Kathryn went back inside the denuded studio--they had even taken some of the artwork she and Jamie had bought for the place!--found the phone dead, plugged it back in and called Jamie in Kowloon... "And that's what's happened! Gees! What do we do?" she said, almost in tears. "I don't know right now. First we have to find out who this guy is. He didn't even give his name?" "No, and I didn't ask. I'm sorry, I was so pissed off that I wasn't thinking clearly. But those guys had Burbank PD uniforms, and the fat man did look familiar, like someone I've seen on TV or in the papers." Jamie thought for a second. "The, ah, equipment you were using has a feedback buffer, which might have captured a few seconds of the last image you saw after the link was broken, but before the power was cut." She gave Kathryn some instructions, and indeed there was a stored image so she put it online. It was only a couple of frames, but it showed a fuzzy image of a pudgy, smirking, and familiar face "I'm not sure, but I think that's Albert Hinterland," said Jamie slowly. "He was notorious on the West Side as a power broker, pretty much ran things a few years ago. If that really is him. Like I say, I can't be sure. Word was he got recalled over, ah, "a law too far" as they called it. What in hell is he doing in our studio with Burbank PD?" They sat silently for a moment; then Jamie noticed that while Kathryn had been relaying her disastrous story, the hotel message light had lit; the display showed that Billy had called. She put Kathryn on hold and called Berkeley. "Billy! Gees, things have taken a dive." Billy immediately looked concerned. "What happened did the Thumb..." "No, it's not your equipment. Kathryn is safe, still in Burbank. I have her on the phone; let me add your call to hers." She touched a few button and the two callers were now in split screen mode. With everyone listening Jamie said to Billy, "Have you been following the news?" "Not much, too busy. James and I talked about the speech that guy gave in Congress a week ago or thereabouts. Seemed like another rant from another Nanny." "Well, I don't know if it's related, but some guy, apparently a government type, with two cops broke into our studio while Kathryn was working. They grabbed a lot of your equipment and other things, left no name or reason, didn't even present a warrant. We think the guy's name is Albert Hinterland, but have no idea what he was after."

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"How can that happen? You can't just break into someone pad and steal stuff! Do we have a lawyer?" Jamie sighed. "No, I never retained one. We don't really want it to get out, what we're doing. Not that it's illegal, or that it'd hurt someone. Hell, what we're doing is going to save most of the human race! I wanted to avoid any interference; it's hard enough getting things done as it is. Looks like my plan was blown anyway." James added, "And with cops in attendance, it'd be tough to get a lawyer to work for us without tipping our hand." "So we've got to tighten things down," said Jamie to Billy, moreover to everyone, "You'd better cut the link to Burbank, and send a worm out to erase any logs. I don't think this guy is smart enough to trace us to Berkeley, but we can't be too careful. Kathryn, you'd better pack up whatever they didn't take and move up to Berkeley." "Damn! I like this place." "I know hon, but it's not safe there anymore, and you have to disappear. I don't think they could actually harm you, but you never know. The old power structure isn't really dead, just dormant, and they've a history of violence. Ruby Ridge, Franconia Notch, remember? Besides, this guy knows who you are, and is probably trying to find out about me. He won't get far, but that'll just make him more persistent." She thought for a moment. "The equipment he took from our studio was just training gear. I doubt he will be able to figure out what we are doing from it. Time to go underground. Billy, can you find places for us pronto? I have things to attend to here." "Sure. The Doc is going to be busy with her transmitter for a while, can't do much until then. Come on up Kathy, I'll get you settled." Jamie smiled grimly. "Good. Something discreet please. I'll work something out for everyone when I get there. Let me let you both go, got things to do." She hung up and faced a very quiet duo. Sareena spoke first; "I don't get it. What's going on?" "Beats me. I didn't foresee any resistance or interference from the government. Maybe I've grown complacent, maybe this is a vendetta, or a sign of something in the air, perhaps growing out of that harebrained scheme to shoot down the asteroid." James said to Sareena, "You see, there are people in our national government who used to run things, badly, but they've been beaten in the last few elections. There are still enough of them to cause trouble, and they are trying to regain power by scaring everybody with the asteroid we're going to take care of. Our approach is subtle and it will work, now that I've seen your abilities."

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Sareena blushed. She would never develop immunity to her teacher's attentions. "Their approach," Jamie continued, "is to use all the old nuclear weapons to shoot it down. A really dumb, dangerous idea, but it'll go over with most people..." "Why don't we just tell 'em what we're doing?" the teenager asked. "Because they can't understand. Oh, there're a few who trust scientists enough to go with the X-ray laser they're building up in the Owens Valley, and there are many who think the lunar impact is some manifestation of "divine will". There are even some people who denounce all technology. Used to call them Luddites. EveryMan however, despite the momentary lapse into reason of the last decade, sees brute force and might as the only way to solve problems. Hence, the old guard exploits this as a way back into power." Sareena almost whispered, "I think I hate politics already, and I'm not even old enough to vote." "I grok that." Jamie smiled at the quizzled look on the girl's face. "But we should wrap up things here. I need to convince your mom that you need to continue your studies at Berkeley. Not a lie, since you will be at Berkeley, and you will be learning way more than you'd ever learn here in school." "I don't feel bad about fibbing a little to my folks. After all, I'm helping to save their lives!" Jamie said solemnly, "Not just theirs: everybody's."

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Chapter 26 Al Hinterland was ecstatic: he had pulled off a coup against those women, coming up with fodder for his anti-intellectual campaign with an immorality bonus. Many people were still Puritanical about sex without "benefit of marriage", and were particularly squeamish about NetSex. He could milk that aspect to death: unconventional sex was always a crowd pleaser. The equipment he had appropriated from their laboratory was a total mystery to him. It looked like computer stuff, and that VR rig was nothing like those he had used (woe to him if his constituents found he himself had sampled NetSex frequently!). But it looked expensive, and even at pennies on the dollar it would fetch a good coin. The paintings he took would make good donations to local schools. More importantly, he could sow and nurture the seeds of fear. Despite what it was designed for, this apparatus looked evil, with all its connections to the human body. Any normal person could see that, and if it looked evil, it must be evil. An evil invention from mad scientists. A Frankenstein's monster threatening the citizenry, a horrible perversion, an obscene mating of woman and machine. Al had no idea what those scientists did with this gear, but he knew what he could do with it: frighten the voters into re-electing him. It was a weapon in his crusade against--what had his nephew called it? A dragon! He was a knight on a Crusade to slay a dragon. Good thinking kid, he thought. I must call him. Ernie was busy leaking misinformation to the press corps when his uncle called. The reporters in attendance knew full well that these leaks were far from the truth, such as the intimation that, though the laser being built by CalTech was tucked away in the Eastern Sierra, it possibly threatened San Francisco (most people didn't know geography anyway). Veracity be damned! The fact that such stories were reported on TV gave any lie credibility. Ernie also encouraged the various talking heads to agonize over the issue of "collateral emissions", as he had christened it, in their daily diatribes. The mere syllabic count in "Low Frequency Electromagnetic Radiation" would strike fear in the hearts of the voters. Technophobia reigns! So it wasn't until the next day that he got around to returning Al's call. Ernie was very interested in the amount of gear his uncle had confiscated, and he thought that the immorality ploy Hinterland had concocted was inspirational. His uncle was a genius when it came to this kind of political manipulation; he could learn a lot from him. "So Uncle," he asked, "What's your next move?"

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"Well son, I've got some friends at a local affiliate of Murdock News, and I'm going to clue them in that an illegal sex club was raided in Burbank. Time was that we could call it a drug lab, which would get people's attention, but things are too liberal these days. To be honest, the sex club thing isn't enough, given the present climate, but this is just a tease. We let it percolate for a few days, give the other local stations time to cash in on it, then reveal that is wasn't the club that was illegal, it was the sex." "But how can you have illegal sex? Were there children involved? Anything non-consensual?" "Ah, that's the secret. This Merrill woman we found there, she was hooked up to some kind of advanced VR rig. Now, she has a history of being involved with NetSex. We could go several ways: we could say she was being forcibly manipulated, though I think she'd protest a bit too loudly. We could hint that she was performing sex acts on children, or that they were maintaining a whole stock of Cybersex slaves, something she'd have a harder time denying." "Why?" "There is an air of secrecy around that laboratory. I have no idea what that stuff actually does, I only know it looks like some fancy VR. Furthermore, I still can't find anything on her partner, other than a first name. No driver's license, voting record, address, bank accounts, credit cards, nothing! And where there's a secret, there's room to embellish, fabricate, and FUD." "The famous FUD!" "Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. We'll give the locals several conflicting stories, all bad, and let the people wonder which one is the truth. They'll pick the most damaging, of course, and once we know we'll run with that." "I like that Cybersex slave story myself. It ties in with the "scientists run amuck” theme that Doltman is pushing." "Yes, I've been watching your work. Very impressive for such a youngster like yourself. I'm proud--it must be in the genes." Ernie flashed a self-satisfied smirk. "Thanks! Your tip from that woman at CalTech helped a lot. Imagine, a laser that you can't see which runs on energy from nothing. That smells of scam, even if the scientists can do it. And if I can make it stink then the Congressman's military solution is a shoe-in. They’re already calling it “Doltman’s Hammer”. Soon he’ll be "Congressman Doltman, Defender of the Earth"; he can't loose!" Al sat for a moment, thinking, then queried, "I wonder if there's any way to tie these two stories together. What's that gadget called again?"

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Ernie rustled through some papers, came up empty, then searched his computer files. "Ah ha! Here it is: a 'Zero Point Energy X-Ray Laser'. Sounds formidable, like a code for something." "Yes; more importantly, it sounds dangerous. It gives me something to go on. Should have pursued it when that Cesar woman first contacted me. Must be getting old." "No way Uncle, you're just getting your second wind! Well, I've got to get back to work. Good talking to you again, and I think we've got a couple of winners here." Al waved goodbye to his nephew and signed off. "Hmmm," he mused to the blank telephone screen. "I've got some work to do myself." ________________________________________ As Hinterland sat plotting, Jamie was high over the Pacific Ocean with her own thoughts. First class isn't much better than coach for the huge increase in price, she concluded. I hate public transportation in any form. A few more centimeters of leg- and hip room, free cocktails (if you drink), first on/off the plane, and 50 channels of drek on a tiny washed-out screen with tinny sound. She wished she could just travel in her normal way. But that normal was only for a woman living in the Greater World, and with Kathryn hitching she had to be more conventional. Perhaps what Jamie resented was the fact that the hitching was over for now, but she was stuck flying back on an airliner; an unclaimed return trip ticket might raise suspicions. Thank goddess it wasn't the fourteen-hour flight she'd taken in her previous life. Five hours was about all she could take of this. Best not to dwell on it, not with a crisis looming on the horizon. She had not foreseen these troubles, and that bugged her hugely. So far events had unfolded as she knew they must; her path on this particular fold was well mapped, and she was not one to embark on such a venture without proper research. Yet the studio break-in was a total surprise. What had changed? The meeting with Sareena's mom Prarthana went well, went as expected. Jamie was nothing if not persuasive, and the offer for a free ride to study at Cal Berkeley under the tutelage of a world-class mathematician was an easy sell. How this prestigious institution had found her daughter and tapped her for special consideration, out of all the billions of teenagers in the world, mystified Prarthana and raised mild reservations. However, Jamie assured her that the girl's near legendary expertise on the Net was pegged as the identifier for recruitment into this accelerated educational program. Sareena's parents gave their blessings to her advanced studies, providing that she remotely keep up with her mother's software needs. These needs required very little time these days, so advanced had Sareena's

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coding skills become. She and James would leave for the Bay Area in a few days. No problem there, that had gone smoothly. She and James would be in Berkeley soon, as expected. James, hmmmm; she tried to remember if she had known of any of his girlfriends--she and he had never been that close. Kathryn was really falling for him, and Jamie had seen his eyes light up when she called at the hotel, heard the concern in his voice over Kathryn's emotional state. This romance she had not foreseen. It was a small thing (perhaps!), below the radar, a variable in this venture that had little net effect (perhaps!). Still, she had failed to predict the imminent affair, and this annoyed her. Something was amiss, and it itched in her brain, just beyond reach. Jamie started to drift off to sleep to the roar of the engines, and her mind starting making random non-linear connections the way active minds do just before nodding. I really miss Pat, she thought. It's been almost six months. Maybe if Kathryn and James... She was jolted awake by a superfluous announcement for passengers to set their clocks as they had just crossed the International Date Line. Jamie hated being awakened out of sequence, one of her pet peeves. She had never used an alarm clock, not even when, as a kid, she had been an early-morning paperboy. This intrusion made her more cranky than she expected, and she couldn't concentrate on scratching that brain itch. My, I'm getting emotional in my second century. I don't often lose focus like this. For that matter, she thought, why was I so flustered at the train station, meeting James and Sareena? It was almost like I saw them in a different light. More random connections. Jees, I wanted to kiss him! What was that all about? Loneliness? Is there some kind of feedback... Her train of thought was suddenly switched to a siding when the flight attendant handed her a warm towel. They certainly try to make things pleasant, but can't you all just leave me alone? After wiping her face Jamie tried to calm down, tried to track down her previous stream of freeassociation. What was that near incestuous, momentary lust toward James? And why did I pull back from Sareena when she first ran up? Was Kathryn just hitching then? Did she... Then it hit her, slapped her rudely across the frontal lobes. Something totally unprovoked, something out of the bluest blue, an answer to the why, and to the what had and would keep changing questions, how things were going wrong. The proverbial forty-two. She strained against her seatbelt. And oh, the consequences! She was a fool, she was a damn fool! What she had struck like a Howitzer shell was that she had failed to account for the fundamental principle of Modern Physics: any

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experimenter influences her experiment by the mere fact of observing, the most obvious manifestation of the Greater World! Her presence on this fold, doing what she knew must be done, had changed the topology of the space. The cat was both dead and alive. Variations from the expected paths over history would therefore mount, multiply, cascade, until, until, what? She had researched so carefully, had planned every detail. Uncertainties had been calculated, but these present deviations were way outside the error bars. Shit! This sophomoric oversight of a basic tenant of science would have real repercussions. The whole project could even fail, snuff out everything, free-will be damned! And when it was all over, could she find her way back? Would the return trip lead her to Patty, or some other manifold completely? Stupefied, she sadly realized that, unlike the children in Grimm's forest, she had no bread crumbs on the trail to help her find her way home.

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Chapter 27 Spring in Berkeley is always beautiful. The winter storms that bring so much rain and fog had shifted north to wet Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. East Bay had captured enough moisture to cause the hillsides to explode with vernal color. Redwood Regional Park was riotously yellow, pink, violet in a vermilion wash of fresh green. It was through this reaffirmation of the persistence of flora that James and Kathryn strolled, hand in hand, in that gait that announced to the world "Caution! Lovers at Work!" as clearly as any electronic highway sign. The two had succumbed to the inevitable shortly after their independent arrivals at Berkeley. Exactly one movie and two Thai dinners later, the need for four separate living quarters dwindled to three, and Jamie had a room for Billy, who had been commuting the considerable distance from Santa Cruz. For James, things had progressed very quickly. He normally dated for months before the relationship was consummated; here he was living with a woman after their third liaison. This made him wary, for in his albeit limited experience with women he found that the more quickly things became physical the sooner the affair evaporated. That Kathryn was a good decade his junior, and that she had dragged him into bed, gave James even more pause. But he had always been a cynical optimist, a mixture of hope and self-preservation. Maybe this time it will work, he told himself. Kathryn was more comfortable with the situation. The confiscation by Hinterland and his SS of the Thumb technology had robbed her of an intimacy she had grown accustomed to, leaving an emotional vacuum. Her new roommate filled that void, and more. Strange how years of a near-platonic relationship with Leon, then a short career as an erotic puppeteer had left me ambivalent towards sex she thought. Now these suppressed feelings surfaced with a vengeance, and she could tell she shocked her mathematician with her enthusiasm. However, he was up to the task, she noted. The new facility Billy and Jamie had set up was about a kilometer from the LBL, not far from where Ashby Ave. turns into Tunnel Rd., a short walk from the couple’s apartment. Kathryn's part in the project was still some weeks away, though she had a daily meeting with the engineer, and James' contributions were currently limited to additional tutoring for Sareena, so they had plenty of time for walks in Redwood Park, Thai dinners, among other things. The four recruits were finally together here, and even though they had yet to ramp up the revolutionary MIVI device, there was a synergy among them. Billy was a whirlwind of engineering, working 12-16 hour days on power couplings, data conduits, and Kathryn's interface, a greatly

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enhanced version of the Virtual Thumb. Sareena's second generation drivers were close enough to completion that he could test individual modules, which in turn required tweaking of the firmware. James and Kathryn would frequently stop by the lab to watch the work before straying off for afternoon. Sareena now had three teachers for the price of one: Billy and Dr. Vong were never too busy to explain the engineering and physics of their work to her, and the girl had remarkable recall of all her newfound knowledge. Of course, she hoarded her time with James, always managing to turn an hour lesson into two, a two-hour class into three. This occasionally raised Kathryn's ire, not so much out of jealousy as out of missed time she could have spent with her mathematician. She understood that his student had a giant crush on him--it was so obvious--but Kathryn had only known betrayal second-hand, through the characters she had played on the stage, never in her personal relationships. Besides, James was plainly honest, and Sareena was now only fourteen, barely more than a child, despite her keen intellect. Kathryn merely coveted the time James spent teaching; insecurities had not surfaced, yet. The four quickly grew comfortable in their working and personal relationship, a synergy that would only intensify as the project progressed. Also among them, however, was the unspoken assertion that Jamie had changed. The pillar of strength and confidence they had known was riddled with cracks. Oh, nothing you could really put a finger on, but her stance, the subdued tone of her voice, the cast of her eyes, all indicated that Jamie was somehow different: less confident, reticent, cautious in her command of the project. And none of them could put words to their feelings.

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Chapter 28 Like a surfer seeing the seaward wave growing, cresting, promising a major ride, Al Hinterland felt the groundswell of support beginning to build for his return to politics. How easily the masses were swayed, he thought. People these days react 99% emotionally, 1% rationally, thanks to decades of government-run schools. Stress how to feel about something, not how to think critically; that was the message so effectively taught until recently, when the damned Liberty partisans return control of the schools to parents. But the work was done: the voters had all received public "education", and their children's schools were still bastions of self-esteem bestowed, not earned; form over substance, over content. A poorly educated populace was easier to control. All the gains by the opposition could be won back by appealing to the 99% reaction. Therefore, Al and his party merely needed to start the FUDball rolling; it would grow by accretion. And grow it did. Al was receiving letters, first by the tens, then by the hundreds, filled with distrust for "those elitist scientists" and moral indignation over the "perversions" they allegedly committed. Significantly, one out of every three letters included campaign contributions--Hinterland was elated! He had disposed of the confiscated equipment at a handsome profit, and now his war chest was brimming with donations: plenty of cash for bribes, surreptitious investigations, and further "evidence". Things would be different this November. Al had also kept in touch with his nephew; he learned that Doltman's campaign to supercede that ZPEXRL scam with a good old military solution had been passed in Congress, despite having a minority membership. The FUD tactics Al employed worked equally well over entire districts and states, and there was enough pressure from the constituents of enough Liberty Party members to force them to support Doltman's bill, much to their chagrin. Ah, victory is sweet, and spoke of things to come. The military brass was entirely behind the project; since they had been removed from their duty as world police force they had few opportunities to strut their stuff. A chance to show off and fire their big guns (and to get a huge increase in funding) was irresistible. Global warming was obsolete, as far as a political lever was concerned. Bring on the asteroid! __________________________________________ Work had already started on Doltman's Hammer, an array of a thousand fusion-warhead super missiles. Each missile was actually a trio of ICBMs lashed together: two would boost the third into orbit, and the third would carry the 2-megaton weapon to JMS2032. Government-owned

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engineers calculated that this would be enough to vaporize the asteroid, assuming a 5% dud rate, with a one in two-hundred chance of booster failure, meaning failure to achieve orbit. Of course, this possibility was not made public. But Jamie knew; it wasn't hard to figure out. One in two hundred, five out of a thousand falling back to Earth, potentially ten-megatons of explosives landing on Dundee, Scotland, Bendigo, Australia, Laurant, France, or Two Egg, Florida. Not to mention the fact that even if all of the weapons impacted the asteroid, the energy would be insufficient to alter its course much. However, the possibility of blast debris falling into the larger gravity well of the Earth was uncomfortably far from remote. Consequently, the five had a meeting at which Jamie tried to convey the new urgency to finish the project. The Hammer would go up-and perhaps come down--in late August, so they a little more than three months for completion, not the six they had planned. Her words were sufficient to alarm and motivate them, but her tone was not reassuring. Even at that first meeting, when she had solemnly laid out the problem, Jamie had seemed in control. Now, although her role was only to let the team do its work, she was too often absent, offered little advice or encouragement, to make them feel confident. But they knew they had critical roles to play, whether this whole evolutionary leap into a Greater World idea was true or not. So, after Jamie quietly left them after the meeting, they resolved to speed things up, take greater risks, and meet this new deadline. Billy immediately had an idea on how to cut some corners by throwing an element of caution to the late April breezes. He grabbed Kathryn and quickly dragged her off to the interface, leaving her only time for a fly-by kiss for James. This left tutor and student alone. "Gee," said Sareena after a beat, "somehow it all seems more dangerous now. Would your country really do that? Launch all those bombs?" "I'm afraid so. Do you know that at one time there were 50,000 such bombs in the world, all pointed at everybody? Insane, that's what it was, insane. But people kinda came to their senses and tore down most of the weapons. And even though my country has been pretty sane for the past sixteen years, there are still a lot of soldiers who want an excuse, any excuse, to use the remaining bombs. Nobody else has as many bombs as we do, and people are scared, so, just as it used to happen when I was your age, the US plays policeman." She sat quietly, staring at James, trying to see him as a teenager. "What were you like as a kid?" He chuckled at her quick change of subject. "Geeky. I was into music and math equally. Had the music been mainstream stuff I might

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have been more popular, but I went for the weird. I wasn't very social, pretty much an outsider." "Did you have many girlfriends?" "No. A couple, but I didn't know what to do with them, and they didn't know what to make of me." "Were any like me?" she said, eyes narrowing. "Nope. None at all. My math interests pretty much turned everybody off." Two beats this time, and deep breath, then, "If you hadn't met Kathryn, do you think you'd like me more," said Sareena. "Ha! Sneaky girl!" Sareena blushed as much as her dark complexion allowed. "Well, I'm kinda scared, and I want to know." James put her hand into his. He hadn't wanted to try to explain things he barely understood to a teenager, but he really couldn't dodge the issue any longer. "Sareena, I do like you a lot, but you've got to understand that I'm many years older than you." "I know that!" "Yes, intellectually you do, but not from experience. When there are many years separating two people, communication is hard. It'd be like in the old SETI scenario, if we had found an immensely older civilization. Words and symbols might be received, but who knows what they would mean? Besides, what would there be to say? The things people do, what they think about, their feelings, are shaped by what has influenced them. An older civilization might have nothing in common with us, no point of contact. Likewise, the longer someone lives, the more influences there are to shape him. You must know that I like and respect you, am happy to be with you, and am often proud of you. But even if this whole SETI thing was a problem we could overcome, you're a minor and I'm a major. It's just not right to be anything other than friends. Do you understand?" Sareena had predicted that he would say the last thing, but had not expected the first. It made his words seem less like a rejection to her, but she had a hard time hiding her disappointment. "Aw, Sareena," he whispered, "don't rush growing up. Enjoy your adolescence." "Does that mean we're gonna fail, and these bombs will kill everything?" "Naw, we'll be fine. You'll be fine, and have plenty of time to meet nice boys. Besides, you know, I love Kathryn. Don't know how that happened, but it did and I'm happy about it. It doesn't mean we can't be friends, does it?" Sareena sniffed, "No."

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"Good." James squeezed her hand and placed it back in her lap. "Now I have to get home. Will you be alright? I'd guess Billy will need a little coding shortly. He always seems to when he gets these brainstorms." Sareena nodded and smiled at her teacher as he waved goodbye. For some time she stood in front of the meeting-room mirror, looking, trying to remember all of the things Jamie had told her that day outside her school.

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Chapter 29 Ernie sat in his new corner office in the Watergate Building, admiring the view and himself. No junior staffer had ever risen so quickly in the Doltman hierarchy, nor in any congressional outfit in recent memory. The astronomical cash-flow this nuclear missile defense program had initiated was filling his boss's coffers with bribes and kickbacks. Not that he could even hint at such a thing, and any sudden show of wealth would set off alarms, even among the friendly media. But profit could be hidden with creative accounting, with enough skimmed off to rent Ernie this ostentatious office as a reward for his "creativity". Ah, the wages of sin, he thought. But it's not sin! We are doing good work here, and bringing the population back around to the proper order of things. The last speech the Congressman had delivered, written by Ernie himself, was to a group of labor leaders, the last of a dying breed of neoproletariat organizers who had been eeking out a living as the working class divested itself of those archaic conglomerations. Labor leaders had put aside all minor political differences years ago to present a unified front for the Republicrats; individual initiative had decimated the ranks of organized labor. (Organized crime also had suffered when most victimless crimes--drugs, prostitution, gambling--had been completely legalized. Crime bosses too were turning to the Republicrats to, of all things, reinstitute these laws.) Needless to say, it was a friendly audience for Doltman. "Friends, I come before you today to update you on this great, historic adventure we've undertaken to save our Moon. Never before in the history of our planet have so many labored so hard on a single peaceful project so vital to our continued prosperity. Before I give you the details, I wish to thank you on behalf of the American people, and all the people of the world, for your vigilance, your dedication, and your industry." Thunderous applause, not at all self-conscious. "You, the workers, have managed to resurrect the strategic arms that have for so long lain fallow. You, the workers, have distributed these weapons that will shield the Moon from that marauding asteroid to the many launch sites around the world. And you, the workers, will be there, fingers on the button, to fire these Avenging Angels of Earth at the intruder." Doltman had made a deal with the most generous labor leaders: they would get to give the command to launch the rockets. It took some maneuvering with the military commanders, but we are all on the same team, right?

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"No scab scientists will be able to do what honest workers can. No one who gets paid to think can replace a man who sweats for a living. Brains will never, ever replace brawn." EveryMan in the audience sprung to his feet in a cheer. No matter that few workers even perspire in the robot-populated, environmentallycontrolled plants of the 21st Century. No matter. The camaraderie of unskilled labor ruled the day here. "As we speak here tonight in solidarity, as we are joining hands to save the Moon from imminent destruction, scientists--" he sneered the term "--are working in California on a hare-brained scheme to remove the threat from space. They plan to use a big flashlight, of all things, to push the meteor from its path of destruction!" The floor exploded into laughter, but Doltman held up his hands for silence. "Friends, comrades, it would be funny except for two facts. One, it can't possibly work, but it calls our practical solution into question, and two, much more importantly, it requires very few workers. There's very little real labor involved, only some technicians. Those effete snobs are putting you out of work!" Boos, hisses, and general displeasure rose from the collective. "Not to fear, friends, not to fear. I'm one of you, I'm on your side, and it is I who looks out for you welfare. My people are closing in on those scam artists in California--at CalTech and Berkeley--to shut down their bogus, dangerous, and anti-worker project. Legal proceedings have already begun. In fact, one of our local representatives has already shut down a technical house of prostitution in Burbank, closely associated with these scientists, no doubt the source of their funds. And he is closing in on the secretive perpetrator of that immoral virtual sex shop." Paradox is a subtle concept: A. Most forms of adult entertainment, including certainly the virtual kind where no actual physical contact occurs, had been legal for almost two decades. Only child-involved and violenceoriented behaviors were still outlawed. B. Virtually all of the attendees had partaken of sex-forhire at some point in their lives, and the majority was regular consumers. Despite A. and B., the congregation shouted in righteous indignation "the perverts!", "sinners!", "whore mongers!" At that moment Doltman could sell anything to them. "Fellow Americans, I need your help in this. I need you to muster the troops. I need you to assemble the ranks. Get them organized, have them recruit friends and family, and when we're ready to close down those

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pointy-headed traitors, have them call the local authorities, have them demonstrate, have them petition, have them recall, Have them vote the party line. Above all, have them vote Republicrat in November. Throw the intellectuals out, for your sake, for your children sake, and for America's future!" Ernie especially liked that last line he wrote for his boss. Like in country music, where a song about trucks, rain, cheatin', and Momma couldn’t possibly fail, misplaced moralizing and the insertion of patriotism and parental obligation randomly into a speech insures success. In addition to being the oratory advisor and editor, it was also the chief staffer's job to review the reports from "grassroots" organizations, really local party cells, analyze the information and give Doltman the Readers Digest Condensed version. Ernie read with interest, and some familial pride, that his Uncle Al was polling well, and had assembled considerable funds for his campaign. Money would soon be the lubricant it once was in the electoral process. The short interlude of rationality since 2016 would be over, and politics would return to doctrine. Madison Avenue would once again focus the debate, not the Cato Institute. An emotional appeal trumps a logical argument every time, and the Republicrat sales team had practically closed the deal. "Doltman's Hammer" would do more than blast that comet or whatever out of the sky: it would pound the last nail in the coffin of their opposition.

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Chapter 30 Kathryn didn't really want the added pressure of an accelerated timetable, but Billy seemed to relish the idea. He never impressed her as an impatient fellow; however, like a pit bull he grabbed onto an interesting idea and gnawed at it furiously until it yielded. The new deadline had restoked the fires of his engineering. He had set up his studio laboratory in a medium-sized rented storefront on Durant Ave. where he had cleared out the old displays and boarded up the windows. Billy could do all his chip design anywhere, but he needed space for fabrication, assembly, power control and testing. And, of course, room for the pilot, Kathryn. Initially his lab was little more than a workbench upon which stood his prototype ZPP receiver; now it had grown into a snake's nest of cables, panels, screens, and equipment both bulky and delicate. Billy occasionally wondered where Jamie got the cash for all his gear, because whatever he needed he ordered via FAX to a single number, and it arrived within the hour. This spoke of formidable financing, but he figured that the mission was important enough for her to pull out all the stops. The workspace was "decorated", if that is the word, in High Rococo, not by choice. The remarkable detail of design and filigree of fine wiring that caught the eye would do justice to any 18th Century artist. Workers and visitors alike had to thread carefully through Billy's labyrinthine laboratory, but he worked best in these conditions. During the week following the solemn meeting he had his hands full with the power transfer from Cal's Zero Point Potential generator; he had never worked at gigawatt levels before. Fortunately the transmission didn't take place in the standard way. Dr. Vong opened a series of sequential ZPP nodes from her lab at LBL to Billy's, like an impossibly fast train of marquee lights. Since each node remained open for only a picosecond, leakage was minimal so heat dissipation wasn't a problem. However, Billy had to put that energy to use immediately; his specially designed capacitor banks charged so quickly that the displacement current alone produced a horrific magnetic field. The ever- resourceful engineer didn't waste the field; in one afternoon he built a magnetic circuit to cogenerate power for the lab. Huge electric bills might raise some eyebrows if they were being watched, and a healthy amount of paranoia had developed in the team after the Studio break-in. So right after the meeting Billy decided, rather than redesign the Thumb 3.0 from the ground up, he would just modify what Kathryn had been using. She impressed him as an adaptable woman who could probably handle more problems at the operator level than he first anticipated. He had intended to make the interface more autonomous, but after reviewing the

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logs of the Jamie/Kathryn hitching sessions he chose to relegate more control to the pilot in order to concentrate on the power transfer. By the end of the week he was ready for some tests. Time was of the essence, and Billy thrived under stress. But Kathryn didn't need the pressure; she had issues of her own. Though she and James had been an "item" for only a couple of months, she had been thinking of him romantically for much longer. He was the first man she had been attracted to in years, the first one since Leon's death, and he had been really just a companion, a gentleman friend. Strange as it seems, she had not been with a man for over a decade, despite her previous occupation. She was in a strange emotional space. The long-awaited release of sexual tension had just about overwhelmed her, and if that was not enough, the sudden cessation of hitching with Jamie had left a void. Her experience with the Thumb had engendered a state of physical and emotional closeness to another person that was nearly the same as the intimacy between lovers. That intimacy had now been transferred to James. Kathryn had fallen hard, for James, and felt extremely vulnerable. She was fast getting to the point where she was secure only when he was present, and even then she was unsure. James was kind and sweet, attentive, but not overly expressive or sexually aggressive. She hung on him, she suffered more at their partings, she almost always had to drag him into bed. Somehow this made her insecure. Not that he would ever cheat on her--she had become resigned to Sareena's crush--but shouldn't he be as addicted to her has she was to him? Isn't that what love was? She kept telling herself that men are always reticent about expressing emotion, and that James was a particularly laid back kind of guy, not given to the wild winds of feelings that most people had. When she broached the subject, he said he had a great deal of "emotional inertia", but putting a name on it didn't help much. For mixed in with the sex, intimacy, joy, and insecurity, maternal instincts had started to surface, something she had never expected. How does he feel about children, she thought. How do I feel? How will I handle it? Consequently, this added urgency of an accelerated timetable only added to her stress. Her acting skills allowed Kathryn to mask her inner conflicts, but they wouldn't go away. I can't screw this up. People are depending on me. She had never been in this position before, where her actions and abilities mattered beyond a paycheck. And there was no middle ground; if they succeeded, a new way of life awaited. If they failed, humanity would go the way of the dinosaurs. She desperately wished for the sense of closeness she used to share with Jamie. Without her daily dose of confidence, her instruction and encouragement, Kathryn would lapse into self-doubt. But the Thumb was

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gone, Jamie was absent most of the time, and she spent her time working or with James. She could talk with him, but it wasn't the same; her vulnerability kept certain subjects off the table. However, he did give her moral support for her piloting part in the project; that was something at least. "Here, put this on," said Billy, interrupting her reverie. "It's just a Thumb interface, but I've reconfigured the end node here for better throughput. I'm not certain some things will work out, and I want to check, maybe make some adjustments." As she donned the interface, Kathryn thought So do I. So do I.

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Chapter 31 It felt good to be in the saddle again, thought Candidate Hinterland. His constituents had gone too long without his guidance; how would they know what to think, how to act? This charade of selfdetermination foistered on his people by the Liberty Party had gone on far too long--they were beginning to realize what that meant: selfresponsibility. They were making their own decisions and living with the consequences, and this frightened them. People don't want responsibility, he knew. They want someone to take care of them, to hold their hand, to pat them on the head and give them support when they behave stupidly. Who better to hold their hand than Big Brother Republicrat? Who better a head-patter than he? Al understood that when he said "We need to [fill in the blank]" he really meant "I want to [fill in the blank] to get more control, so I'll take more of your money, skim off some for myself, do what I want with the rest, and give the appearance of 'doing the people's work'". Everyone will be happy, no one will be the wiser, 'progress' will take place. And freedom? Fah! Who needs it? Freedom from choice is what they really want. The only truly free people are politicians, and everyone can't be a politician, right? Who would be left to be governed? Hinterland had been keeping in close contact with his nephew these last few months. Doltman's plan was proceeding wonderfully; his numbers grew with every speech lauding the governmental rescue of the Moon. He had tapped into the great damsel-in-distress that was the population at large, and nothing gets that damsel hotter than a crisis. Fifteen years of attempted liberty were evaporating with every promise of thermonuclear salvation. These national sentiments trickled all the way down to the local level, and Al was surfing the coattails with all the expertise he had. The furor over the virtual sex-slave laboratory had died down; the local news had progressed onto the next public indignation du jour. The coup in Burbank had been a roaring success, but he needed to keep in the public eye all the way to November. So, casting about for another scandal to milk, he decided that this Jamie person, with no discernable government file, must be a subversive radical. She hadn't showed up at that lab he had raided; in fact, the other woman and everything he hadn't confiscated there had disappeared without a trail to follow. Most of the stuff he had appropriated there he'd liquidated for funds, but he still had a transceiver of some kind. Certainly he hadn't a clue as to its workings, and neither did his civil technicians, so he had to hire some private brainiacs to 'backward engineer' the gear. After several weeks they told him that it was some new kind of virtual reality rig (he knew

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that!), and although it was still receiving some kind of signal, they didn't know what the data stream contained. It wasn't until a biotech colleague of one of the engineers noticed a sideband harmonic containing EEG signals that Hinterland's hired guns could decipher the broadcasts. It was almost like the data collected from a patient in an intensive care unit. From this they were able to copy the technology so that several receivers could be duplicated. Whatever was transmitting the data was doing so on an extremely high frequency RF band, but like any transmitter it could be located through triangulation. Hinterland ordered this, thinking that it was a pretty good lead in finding this miscreant who valued her privacy over the public good (read: his ambition), and shortly thereafter his engineers tracked the source of the signals to Berkeley. So, he thought, they are still in California. Excellent! I can make some pretty big political hay out of this. Might even get me to Sacramento in a few years. Al cranked up his contact network in the Bay Area to search for anything technologically unusual. This was a difficult task, since for many decades this region, with its elite universities and high-tech companies, had produced a huge array of technological oddities. Complicating matters was the fact that the signal moved around, occasionally vanishing altogether, although usually staying in the East Bay. Its carrier was growing weaker with time; Al had to move soon. He wasn't sure that the transmission had anything to do with the elusive woman, but this equipment was a mystery and so was she: guilt by association, he thought. He ordered his technical minions to move operations to the Bay area, the better to localize the diminishing signal. One set up shop in the Embarcadero, another in Sausalito, the third in Oakland, and they began to search for some kind of regularity. The signal winked on and off, bouncing almost randomly for a week or so, before it settled once more in the north end of the city proper, near Exhibition Park. This was the third time it had centered there, and it had always been stationary for several hours each time. The signal had almost disappeared this last time when Hinterland's technicians reported to him that they had established a pattern. Elated, he cleared his schedule for the next likely sighting and took a fast plane to San Francisco. Like a shark sniffing blood, Hinterland, surrounded by his remora, circled in for the kill.

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Chapter 32 The way Jamie had been traveling while on this Mobius junction was unconventional. When Kathryn had been hitching she had used planes, trains, and automobiles, even a bicycle once, but otherwise she used the minor loops and bundled toroids that connected various surfaces on this planet at this time. Thus she could visit James in Virginia, then an instant later have pizza in Oregon with Billy. Certain constraints committed her to this junction to see the project through, but Jamie had a few degrees of freedom above and beyond those of her team, at least until a critical mass of Mentors had been established. For traveling around the Bay area however, she used MUNI and BART, a bit more efficient and cheaper since they had been privatized a decade ago, and her bike got her around Berkeley. Her car was still stored in Burbank; a 2009 Mazda RX-10 convertible was a bit conspicuous, and not as convenient in a city with such tightly packed streets. This day she was looking in on Billy and Kathryn's work with the MIVI equipment. Billy was a wonder. When something didn't work just so, as was frequently the case with new technology developed under the gun, he got a dazed look on his face for about five minutes, like he had checked out of reality for a bit, then went straight to the source of the trouble. Then Jamie remembered than he had had that same look on his face when she, as Nathan, had first visited him at the Net concert. Billy's genius at winding a bass line through a piece of music manifested itself as he configured and reconfigured the MIVI gear. They had been testing the equipment for almost a week, a week Jamie was mostly out of town looping through several errands, arranging surreptitious financing for her team. Power now flowed smoothly from Dr. Vong's generators, and yesterday Kathryn had managed to recreate herself as the Asian woman she had been in the virtual Kowloon Park. She was unable to affect even slightly her immediate environment, not even her clothes, but just watching the blond woman morph in a flash into an Oriental lady in the real f'in world totally freaked Billy out. It totally blew away that virtual diner where they had first met for realism, fine coffee notwithstanding. He had to touch Kathryn, just to make sure she was really real. Then he grabbed her and started dancing wildly, almost shaking off her interface and (now) loose fitting clothes. This shit might actually work, he thought. Jamie saw that Billy was still elated from their first success, and also it had taken Kathryn's mind off other issues. She evidently had never had to mix business in with a relationship before, and the stress was telling on her face. There was a special empathy between these women, deeper than that which normally exists in women friends, and Jamie had the

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impression that her friend had deep feelings of guilt, pushed to the back now from the rush of success, but there nonetheless. They were preparing for another test today, and Billy was immersed in honing and tweaking the MIVI, so Jamie stole Kathryn away for a cup of coffee. The day was just busting through an early Summer fog, retreating across the bay to concentrate on keeping the Golden Gate socked in. Their lab was just close enough to the school to walk to Bohemian Promenade. Free Speech had long given way to latte bars and tanning salons, but in the past ten years head shops had made a reappearance. Aromas of coffee and coconut oil mixed with the nostalgic smell of weed. Well, nostalgic for Jamie at least: Kathryn had been born long after the Summer of Love. The relatively early hour, several weeks after Cal's commencement, made for a moderately calm atmosphere, and the women drifted from shop to shop, talking about nothing in particular, buying a knick here and a knack there. Jamie found that she needed the company as much as her friend. She had been beating on herself since that flight back from Hong Kong, and this was the first time in many weeks that she could let her hair down and forget that so much depended on her and her team. But she didn't forget that Kathryn needed a shoulder, even if she hadn't asked for one. They stopped into a coffee bar that was in that limbo between breakfast and lunch, and sat and sipped a bit before Jamie stared Kathryn down. "What?" said the actress turned MIVI pilot, returning the stare. "Just trying to see if everything's alright." "Does it show?" "So I'm not hallucinating! Something shows, but I'm not sure what. You know I don't like to pry..." "But you will!" "...Well, only if you want me to. We haven't had a chance to be girlfriends since before that break-in, and I just thought we could talk." "You first." This was not how she had expected the conversation to go. "What, do you see something now too?" "Not just me, everybody. You are gone more often now, don't say much when you're here--not even now--and you seem to have lost your religion. Is it something we did?" "Hell no! You guys are working out better than I could have hoped. And you don't need me around as much, and I have more details now to attend to, that's why you don't see me. And I never had a religion to lose." "You know what I mean, stop ducking. It's me, Kathryn. For a while we breathed together, danced with the same man together, heck we even peed together! I know you girl. What's up?"

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It was at this point that Jamie suddenly realized two things: that she really needed a shoulder, and that Kathryn providing one was therapy for both of them. "Well, it's kinda hard to explain, but I've sort of suffered a severe blow to my ego." "Some guy you've been keeping on the side jerked you around?" Jamie laughed inside, then out. "No, nothing like that. I made a mistake, a foolish mistake, a sophomoric error. It's deep in the bowels of Physics, but it may have heavy repercussions for us. It's not about you guys; like I said, you're better than I had ever expected. It's me. I thought I had everything researched and planned out, but things have taken many unexpected turns." "So you thought you could see the future?" Jamie turned inward for a moment. If only she knew. "Let's say that my research could make predictions to a very high degree of accuracy. Very high! And everything was going according to this plan within very small error bars until recently. Now, the error I made was not factoring myself into these predictions." Almost to herself she said, "Of course, then I'd have to factor my predictions into my predictions, causing infinite recursions..." "What?" Jamie didn't seem to hear, "...So, with infinite recursions, a butterfly effect would surface." Maybe I never could have had an infallible prediction, she thought. "What butterfly? What the hell are you talking about?" Jamie snapped back to the conversation. "See what I mean? It's tough to explain the why, but what my error has done is jeopardize, maybe, our project. I don't know, and that's the shock. I should know, and I don't." "So you are mad at yourself because you aren't a goddess, other than in appearance?" "Thank you..." "Don't mention it. Girl, we never expected you to be infallible! We all are amazed at your knowledge, abilities, and strength, but when you cut your own legs off we get nervous. Don't hide these things from us, especially me!" Jamie kicked herself again, not for her Heisenberg mistake. Here she had made close friends and she failed to notice it. "OK, mea culpa. I should have seen this..." "Stop it!" "Arrghh! I mean I should have known that I had good friends here, that I could rely on you all beyond just getting the job done. We should have talked."

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"Damn right we should have! Billy, Sareena, James and I have all been worried. A little talk would have fixed things right up." The way Kathryn said Sareena, almost with an extra e, reminded her that there was more business to be discussed. "OK, I've unloaded. Your turn. Come in, open up." Kathryn stared down into her coffee like she was studying the Cliff Notes to her recent life. Most people watching her would have merely seen a stoic, unchanging face, but Jamie knew her too well. She saw a parade of emotions march across her friend's face in an instant, with no one to clean up after the horses. "Jamie, I don't know that I've ever been in love before. Nothing feels like James. I think of all my boyfriends, guys I thought I loved, and I realize that I must have been fooling myself." "Sounds like a good thing." "Well, yes, but I don't know why I feel for him so, and I sure as hell don't know what's going on with him." Jamie's silence said and... "I mean, he's polite--too damned polite!--but certainly not suave. He's affectionate, but he never seems to, you know, need it." "It?" "You know what I'm talking about. I can't seem to get enough of him, but he almost never starts things off. Oh, he's cooperative alright. That's it, cooperative, and reasonably talented. But he never seems to break a sweat. I'm half out of my mind, and he's just there smiling away. That's weird, you know? Think of the guys you've been with. They couldn't wait to bed you, I'll bet, not with a body like yours." Jamie decided no comment was the appropriate answer. Fortunately Kathryn was on a roll. "And then they try to beat you to the finish line. James is so different." "Maybe that's what you see in him." "Maybe, I doubt it. He's so smart, and always in control. Nothing seems to surprise him, nothing seems to get him mad. Nothing seems to turn him on either, except this math he's doing. Sometimes I wonder why he's with me. I know men hide their emotions, but this is ridiculous." "Well, it's a cliché that men hide their emotions. They might do that, but take it from me, they don't have as much to hide. Oh, some wear their hearts on their sleeve, but any guy with something between the ears, like James, is way beyond that reptilian brain stuff." "Huh?" "The reptilian part of the brain is the most primitive part, the most animal-like. Instinct, fight or flight, spread the genes whatever the cost, that sort of stuff."

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"That's another thing. I use birth-control, but so does he. Like he's so afraid of making a kid. You know, I never thought much about that until recently, and being with James, well, I'm thinking I'd like to be a mom. And I don't think he will ever go for it." "Have you asked him?" "Haven't needed to. He's expressed an aversion to children many times. How can he be like that? He's so nice, so supportive, I feel safe with him. He'd make the perfect father." "No he wouldn't, not if he has an aversion to children." "But I could do the parenting." "Think about what you just said. Would you really want a father who just consented to make child? Wouldn't it be better to have a man who likes children?" Kathryn scowled and her facial parade retraced their steps. "And that's another thing. He spends a lot of time with that teenager. If she was older I'd be jealous." "Hey girlfriend, you're already jealous. I can see those green eyes a kilometer away." "No way!" "Way!" "But she's only fourteen!" "And has an enormous crush on him." "Well, yes, I can see that. James isn't a pervert..." "He is the most trustworthy man on the planet." "Sometimes I wish he wasn't; then he'd at least be more normal. Anyway, I like Sareena, that's the weird thing. In fact, I'd like to have a daughter just like her. And James likes her, in a good way. That's why I don't understand why he doesn't want kids." Jamie could only smile in sympathy. She had known this about James; maybe she should have headed off this romance before it started. Adults need to make their own decisions however, and live with the consequences of their mistakes. How would this factor into the project? she thought dispassionately. How cold of me! But will they break up too soon, and wreak the gestalt of the team? Kathryn went back to her coffee Cliff Notes. After a moment, "Maybe it's my own fault. You know that success we had yesterday, me and Billy? I was that Asian woman I'd been when you met me. This time, I really was her. It was amazing! Nothing like the avatars I used at EVR. And in the weirdest way I felt that I was cheating on James. Not that I was sleeping with someone else, just that I was leaving him, leaving all of you, behind." "You know that when we succeed, we'll all be able to live in a greater reality. Someone's got to be the first."

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"Yeah, but I can't help the way I feel. But it was good to hear you say when we succeed, not if. Are you back with us for good?" Kathryn said, clearly anxious to leave the subject. "Hun, I never left." They had been at the cafe through several cups, several hours too long, drowning their fears in java. Both knew Billy was probably pacing, waiting for Kathryn to return so they could get on with it. He was too polite to call. The women left the shop and ambled back to the lab, talking constantly without saying hardly a word. Jamie heard conflict in Kathryn's silence. How would she resolve her mixed feeling about Sareena? Not a clue. Could she and James salvage their relationship? Doubtful. Should she try to prepare him? She remembered an old Kate Bush song: don't get involved between a man and a woman. Too bad Kate had died a few years ago. She never moved from The Sensual World to the Greater World. When they reached the lab, Kathryn going in to experiment, Jamie off to visit teacher and tutor, each regarded the other. Both saw uncertainty in her friend's eyes as they parted, similar emotions stemming from different issues. Still, the ties between the two women tightened in a long hug, leaving Kathryn with an ominous sense of impending closure and Jamie with more questions than answers.

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Chapter 33 Every time Billy tweaked the hardware the drivers needed to be updated, which kept Sareena, and to some extent James, very busy. Sometimes the engineer reconfigured the system several times in a day, and Sareena hadn't finished the first revision before he needed the third. Rather than becoming frustrated however, the teenager tossed hours of work aside to start anew. James admired her easy abandonment of hard labor; in fact, he found more to admire in her everyday. The SETI talk he had had with her frequently replayed in his mind. Oh, he never entertained any improper fantasies about the girl, but he developed a certain wistfulness about her. Where were girls like this when he was a kid? His early experience with women had shaped his ambivalence towards dating. The fickleness and lack of personal focus of the women who would consent to be with him had made him fatalistic about romance. This hot affair with Kathryn had taken him totally by surprise, and had banished his cynicism for the nonce, but he had moments when he wished he were a teenager again, knowing what he knew now. It was a common wish--"youth is wasted on the young" and so forth-- yet there it was. It was during such a lapse into reverie while Sareena was coding that Jamie popped in (in the conventional sense). James looked on as the teenager played her computer as Hendrix played guitar; even her workspace reincarnated Electric Ladyland. While Jamie had leased her group empty spaces for their work--a storefront for Billy, a bungalow for Sareena--she left the interior details for her friends, and each had set up whatever they wanted. The lab Billy had assembled for his hardware research looked like a lab; Sareena programmed in what looked like a head shop. The girl had taken a liking to antique "Summer of Love" psychedelic posters, and the place glowed, bathed in black light, smelling of incense. Her teacher was perpetually amused by the contrast of hippies on the wall and high-level code on the screen. Jamie's knock snapped him out of his daydream (and out of the 60's), and he got up and quietly let her in. "Hi Jamie," he said, glad to see her but noticing the complex expression on her face. "Is everything OK?" "Sure, my boy, sure," she said unconvincingly. She was a mishmash of tugs and pulls; the imperative to finish the project fought the urge to take care of her friend Kathryn. Jamie was feeling uncharacteristically motherly of late, more so after this morning’s talk, and she was troubled by the rift she knew would open between Kathryn and James. They had been a couple for only a few months, but their situations and experiences had welded them tightly together. Now, a crack in that

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weld would bring that whole structure down on top of them, and their emotional resilience might not be sufficient to cushion the impact. Knowing Billy was making progress, seeing Sareena engrossed in her programming, Jamie gave in to her uncommon nurturing inclinations. She hooked her arm around the mathematician's elbow and led him into the tiny back yard. Walking with him like this was an unexpectedly calming experience, and they sat under a cedar tree on an old bench that probably had only a few more "sits" before it disintegrated. "Bored James?" "Huh? Oh, you mean while Sareena works? Naw, you know me, always messing with something in my head. I think I can whip up her algorithms a bit with a few shortcuts from an old Wiles paper I ran across. It seems that a bi-lateral symmetry function will do the job of a more complicated manifold when..." "James! Enough of the math already!" Jamie cried. Whereas she usually enjoyed these insights into deeper math, today, now, she just wanted him to express some, any, emotion. "Doesn't anything concern you other than postulates and algorithms?" He sat in stunned silence, as much as from the outburst as from trying to pull back from his contemplation. "Well, I don't know. I'll have to think..." "Don't think! How do you feel?" "I feel pretty good, thank you. Our project moves along and is great fun. Kathryn's a great girl. Life is good." He hadn't a clue, she thought. "So nothing's bothering you?" "Well, now that your mention it--" ah HA "-- I am occasionally disturbed by something. This whole Mentor thing you've talked about, evolving beyond, living in a Greater World, leaving the others behind. It seems elitist, even unkind, you know? Now, I'm as frustrated as you by the demise of the thinking class, but, I mean, it kinda implies that we are morally superior, or some kind of master race, or something. I'm not expressing myself clearly, but I'm just not comfortable with this idea." Geesh! Resigned to another philosophical discussion, she said, "Dear, not every fish got to walk on land, and evolution is not a ladder we climb. My own parents were incapable of understanding my two doctoral dissertations, yet I loved Mom and Dad dearly. People are born with different gifts, different abilities. Mozart wasn't part of a master race, just because he could compose at the age of four. Nor were Ives, Oppenheimer, certainly not Hawking, members of a superior species. Our abilities will set up apart, but our abilities task with a responsibility. Do you think your parents felt elitist when they cared for you as a child?" "No."

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"And when they became old and needed your help, did you feel superior to them?" "Of course not." "There, you see? We'll be in the same situation. Caring for someone should not make you feel superior, and it doesn't qualify you as a Master, only a Mentor. Just because those we leave behind aren't part of an immediate family doesn't mean that providing for them demeans them." James stared at the ground on front of them, watching a march of ants follow a trail of scent only they could detect. Were they superior because of that ability? “Doesn’t that mean that we will be controlling the lives of all those who don’t become Mentors? Won’t we be just as despotic as any totalitarian? I couldn’t stand for that.” Jamie stroked his hand. “EveryMan and EveryWoman will still have all the freedom they want. They can live where they want, marry whomever they love, work at whatever job that satisfies them, worship whatever they want, hate who they want, and they can make as many mistakes as they want, fail and fall flat on their faces. Our job will be, after we take care of this asteroid, to make sure that there’s always enough food and energy for everyone. We’ve been doing this for 150 years, but not as successfully as we’ll be able to after our critical mass is reached. After that, it’s up to them to live their lives.” Well, I guess that’s OK, he thought. “Will we also have the job of making sure they play nice?” he said, not sarcastically but with concern. “Well, no, not for interpersonal conflicts, or even some international disputes. But we do have the responsibility to keep really dangerous weapons out of the hands of megalomaniacs and power-mad rulers. Since only we can make these weapons, we are accountable.” Navell suddenly became aware that Jamie had sidled closer on the bench and placed his hand on her thigh. So incongruous, with all this philosophical talk. She continued her lecture, but now in a bedroom voice, wanting to leave this subject but sensitive to his concerns, and where she’d directed his hand. "Look. It used to be that the energies EveryMan could wield were small, on the order of 500 joules. Then some smart folks invented chemistry, and the damage he could do escalated. Look what EveryMan did thirty years ago with a few jet-liners." "EveryMan could not have formulated high energy fuels, nor could he have designed anything as complicated as an airplane. But with a knife not much different from the sharpened stone he used tens of millennia ago he redirected those energies with horrific results." "Why? you might ask. Because, like that sharpened stone, he's fundamentally from another era, a time when the reptilian part of the brain

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ruled the proto-human. Instinct over reason, action over contemplation, immediacy over foresight. Fight or flight, but now the fight is not with potential food but over territory. Not so much land as power, the control of his tribe. 'Control freaks', we used to call them, a long time ago." "Sometimes the reigns--a good choice of words, don’t you think?-of power are political, wherein those who want control prey on the fears of a population and make laws that govern the people, never themselves. But another popular method over the centuries of dominating large groups of people is tapping into their fear of death and the unknown in general. So leader-types invent some deity that they have exclusive access to. Those without access must bow down to those who do, and surrender their freedom of action in order to win a reward in the Great Hereafter, a place they've only been told about but a place they really wish to go to. To which to go. To." She giggled softly, girlishly. "The most dangerous form of control comes when these two methods are combined, when laws are passed imposing a morality based on some theism. Ironically, EveryMan and EveryWoman enjoy being governed this way; it gives them a deep sense of security knowing that their belief system is reinforced by the full power of government. Which is fine, as long as the leaders are satisfied with one population. But they never are. 'Power attracts the corruptible' some guy once wrote, and these powerful, corruptible people always expand evangelically with 'god' on their side. Like Hinterland, and Doltman. And the energies they now have at their disposal are frightful." James slowly reclaimed his hand and concentrated on the column of ants. She’s right, and I agree, but what’s coming over her? It’s like one person is talking and another is acting. "Scientists, artists, philosophers--constructive, thinking people have long moved beyond the need to direct everyone's lives. Mmm…" Jamie paused, then continued more quickly. "So we must divert that asteroid. Even if we could escape before the Earth's climate became intolerable, it would not be the responsible thing to do. And knowing all too well what EveryMan can do with the tools we have provided, it’s incumbent upon us to make sure that our cousins have good, free lives while keeping dangerous levels of energy out of the hands of violent people. That we can do, but only… " Jamie stopped talking for a moment, catching her breath. She was finding it difficult to concentrate on her topic; something else seemed more important, and she abandoned this line of discussion. "Another thing. Just because we will reach that critical mass, sooner rather than later I hope, doesn't mean we won't be human anymore. The same instincts and drives will exist in both of us, Mentor and EveryMan. We'll, ah, just be able, to, ah, understand...". Jamie's voice

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faded as a wave of something overtook her. What, she couldn't explain, but when she looked up at James he seemed to glow against the backdrop of the cedar tree's shade. So this is what they mean by seeing someone in a different light, she mused dreamily. She squeezed closer to James, still engrossed in amateur entomology. The ancient bench creaked in protest at the unwelcome shift in weight, which stirred him from his study. That look in her eyes is very familiar. "James," she cooed, "isn't there anything else on your mind?" Squirming back on the bench he said, "Nope, nothing else. You explained things perfectly," he blurted out. She tried a different tact. "Remember that night 'Natalie' visited? We had a nice talk then, about many things. But we never talked about children, other than the childishness of your students." "We didn't?" "No, we didn't." Pause. "And?" "Well, I also figured that the reason women dropped me after a short time was that I never had any need for offspring..." "Offspring?" "...Progeny, issuance. Offspring. And I always took what some called excessive steps to avoid any accidents." Progeny, issuance, offspring. Accidents. His position is certainly clear enough. "And now?" "Now?" Taking his hand to her chest she asked, "Now do you feel any different, with..." At that moment Sareena came bounding out the back door straight at the adults and gave James a kiss on the cheek. "I'm so tired of writing drivers! Billy's got his code, and I want to play. James..." Jamie exploded off the bench. "Don't you ever call this man by his first name again! And stop slobbering on him you tramp! How dare you assume..." "Jamie?" Navell said quietly, wide-eyed, astonished. "...that you are old enough to be that familiar with him!" Louder. "Jamie??" "What is it you do with him, anyway? Oh, I know it is all about mathematics and programming, but what do you really want to do during those lessons, huh?" Shouting. "Jamie!!" It was like she didn't hear her name. Sareena had drawn back about three paces, stunned and afraid by the woman's tirade.

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Swinging around to face the mathematician, Jamie pointed accusingly, "And you! I know men all too well. What things are you putting in her head? She's only a child you know. I bet you..." Too much! Grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her violently James yelled, "What the hell has gotten into you?!" She froze and stared at James blankly. As rapidly as the different light had enveloped him earlier it faded, and there he was, wild, frantic expression his face. A small part of her said finally, some emotion, but that was quickly subsumed as the bulk of her very being was overcome by shame. Jamie broke free and fled out of the bungalow, totally confused, hugely mad at herself, desperately needing to know what the shit was going on.

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Chapter 34 "It's Monday, June 31st. I'm Vapidia Wallace..." "..and I'm Fred Mamry..." "...and this is the evening news. Tonight... excuse me, what? Oh. It's June 30, my mistake. Tonight we start with a report from Washington on the heroic effort to destroy the comet that's approaching our moon. Our reporter on the scene is Grace Davis-Wilson. Grace?" "Thank you Vapidia. Congressman Doltman, the driving force behind the missile defense of the Moon, has been furiously working for months, negotiating with governments around the world for assistance in this historic undertaking. He is out of the country at the moment, but his newly-appointed senior staffer, Ernest Martirez, is about to give a briefing. I've been told that it will be a short talk, and not too technical for our viewers at home. Here he is now." Ernie, wearing a trim black suit and impeccably coiffed, smiled for the cameras. "Thank you, thank you for coming. I'd like to bring you members of the press and the voters up to speed on the program Congressman Doltman spearheaded through the legislature several months ago. First, I must congratulate the voters on the support we have received in this endeavor. There was an attempt to stall the effort by the Majority opposition, but the urgency of the situation, and the good sense of the people to let the government take control of the situation." "In that light, my boss has been tirelessly traveling the globe, trying to convince our allies that we need the use of their launch capabilities. China, Russia, India, Europe and other countries have signed on. As you are well aware, we need to launch at least a thousand missiles in a very short time, and our facilities, though the best in the world, are inadequate in number. Therefore we are making this a global effort. We are supplying the nuclear devices, but the rockets will come from around the world in a gratifying display of global unification." "Now, there has been concern, given the failure rate of some of our allies' launch vehicles, that not enough bombs will make it to the Asteroid. Rest assured that these rockets have been inspected and certified by government officials, and that even if some miss their target, we've recently added a safety factor of about 10% more nuclear devices than necessary to do the job. I have a minute to answer questions." From the back: "Mr. Martirez, are you coordinating with those scientists working in California on some kind of laser defense?" "No, not at all. I'm no scientist, but I have common sense. No light beam will be able to do anything to that asteroid. These people are working outside the province of government, and therefore I don't hold out much hope for their success." With a confidential narrowing of the eyes he

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added, "The Congressman has other concerns with those scientists that I'm not at liberty to discuss with you right now. Another question?" "We've heard that there is an investigation into this group, that their research somehow threatens the Bay area." "Congressman Doltman and myself are coordinating with an esteemed California legislator into that inquiry. More details I'm not permitted to release, but let me say, we all know the dangers of nonsanctioned scientific research. We can't let those intellectual types have free reign to learn whatever they want. Controls, regulations, and laws must be in place. I frankly don't know what they're doing; it might be a scam, it might even be immoral, counter to everything decent I, we hold dear. One more question." "Sir, you mentioned that your colleagues across the aisle tried to block this project but, even with a voting majority they were defeated. How was that? Also, does Congressman Doltman have any plans for November?" "In answer to your first question, even Liberty Party senators and congressmen have to bow to their constituency, and the speech my boss gave at the beginning of all this convinced people that our party's solution was the way to go. As for November, Congressman Doltman has been quietly checking his numbers and treasury. Even at the end of June, it's not too late to start a run for the White House. And let me say, given the displeasure people have shown over the Liberty Party's foot-dragging on this vital, historic mission to save the Moon, I feel that their candidacy this Fall will be very weak. That's all for now; we'll keep you informed on the Congressman's progress. Thank you for coming." The camera panned back to the reporter: "Well, there you have it. The government seems to have things under control. And we'll have to watch Congressman Doltman this Fall. If his plan succeeds, that will be the big story; he just might be unbeatable. Vapidia?" "Thank you Grace, for that report. One thing: I heard that Mr. Martirez called the object that will hit the Moon an asteroid. How is that different from the comet we reported earlier?" "Vapidia, I'm not sure, but I think they are really about the same thing. At least they aren't shooting stars. I don't think we could shoot down a star." "I guess not Grace. Thanks you for that report. It's good to know that our officials in Washington have our best interests at heart and are taking a proactive stand in this matter. In other news, a group of activists in San Francisco has started a petition demanding free public transportation as a basic human right..."

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Chapter 35 Jamie was in a deep funk when she took the afternoon off to visit the Exploratorium in Exhibition Park, a brief respite she recently regularly allowed herself. The legacy of Frank Oppenheimer was celebrating its halfcentury anniversary when she had last visited, that is, in her previous life, and even then it was struggling. Every year fewer and fewer felt the need to explore anything, and Jamie was appalled to see fully one-third of the floor space had been dedicated to video amusements. These were heavily patronized, while the scientific exhibits languished, glanced at in dull befuddlement by lackluster eyes, passing on their way to the food court. Even the few school groups present didn't seem particularly interested in any of the exhibits unless it made a lot of noise and required minimal interaction or understanding. The video arcade held more appeal and it was much more passive and didn't require the teacher to explain anything. Sadly, the staff had to encourage these diversions, since volunteers and donors were growing scarce. Good thing they hadn't relied on "public" money, since political support for "elitist institutions" like science museums had dried up shortly after the turn of the century. It was difficult to do, but after this particular visit, while sitting in the adjoining park, Jamie transferred a sizable amount of cash into the Exploratorium's account. It was challenging enough to cover her team's expenses without tripping any bureaucratic alarms: she certainly didn't want a repeat of that atrocity in Burbank. The fact was that Jamie had been electronically skimming the interest off Republicratic slush funds to pay for the Mobius project. That money had been stolen in the first place; up until 2016 the (now-defunct) IRS had been used as a hammer on political enemies, and the proceeds from these vindictive audits somehow never found their way into the public fund. Doubly galling! She was damned if old school politicians would get interest on their loot as well, so Jamie electronically siphoned enough money to get their work done but not arouse suspicion. The Republicrats had such huge reserves anyway that it wouldn't be missed unless someone pointed it out to them. Skimming for her team was one thing, since appropriation was all that was required. Transferring money from that slush fund to the Exploratorium was a more dicey problem, since the both parties might find disparities. The museum staff might discover these funds during their audits and try to determine the source. Jamie had to be extra clever to hide this large sum among other credits (the letters of appreciation sent out to their donors would have slightly incorrect--on the high side--citations of their supporters' generosity). It took her some time on her Link to arrange all this, but it was worth the effort. She felt the world owed a debt to the Oppenheimer name.

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Even this act of Robin Hoodism did little to assuage her spirits however; her depression remained. She had been lulled into a sense of infallibility by the relative ease with which she had negotiated her way here through Mobius Space, by her ability to engage Billy, Sareena, James, and Kathryn in the project, by her achievement in orchestrating this ballet of keen intellects, and by the successful appropriation of the resources for her group. She had been especially proud of the Studio, but after the breakin she had felt violated. More than that: it was first crack in her confidence and the genesis of her despair. After the revelation that her presence was perturbing her environment to the extent that her predictions and plans were no longer reliable, Jamie had been weighed down by the stark realization that living in the Greater World was not synonymous with infallibility. She knew this intellectually, but it did not soften the blow to her ego. And her ego was under siege. It was bad enough that she had called her own talents and abilities into question; now there was concern about her sanity. Jamie was, after all, not the Jamie she’d been born as. Her transition into a larger reality had produced profound changes in her, changes she was struggling to adapt to, and her ability to reason may also have been altered. Why had she blown up at James and Sareena yesterday? All the girl did was give him a peck on the cheek, perfectly innocent, despite the fact that she had a heavy crush on her teacher. Jamie knew that, and knew that the mathematician was a completely honorable man. Indeed, he blushed over that display of affection. She was casting about for a reason for her angry reaction when she remembered her encounter with the two of them at the Kowloon train station, the last time Kathryn was hitching, just before the break-in. Jamie instantly had a bad feeling, and she stared at the ground in front of her. She knew that she wouldn't have been upset with Sareena, but Kathryn might. Using the Thumb Kathryn had gained the knowledge of "being" Jamie at a fundamental level, experiencing her senses and even emotional reactions many times. What Jamie heard, saw, even felt was transmitted to Kathryn, a level of intimacy that few had ever experienced. However, it was supposed to be half-duplex, one-way, Jamie to Kathryn. Could it possibly be that a feedback loop had been set up? That was not part of the spec, but given the level of ability she had shown in playing someone else, even being someone else, perhaps Kathryn's own ego and personality had been projected back along the data stream, much the way an actress's own persona can shine through the character she plays. I've become a screen, she thought, I've become a screen that receives her subconscious insecurities. With a start Jamie realized that they were living two-as-one, that her implants had not dissolved on schedule. I'll have to fix

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that ASAP. Then, but Kathryn's not using the Thumb anymore, not since it was stolen. How... Jamie thought for a moment about what Billy had done about shortcutting the MIVI process. He said he was using more Thumb technology than he originally planned. That's it! she understood with some relief. They were testing the gear yesterday while I was with James and Sareena. Gees! I'll have to think of a creative apology--don't want Kathryn's feelings to be hurt if she thinks she's hampered me in any way. The fact that much of her insecurity stemmed from Kathryn's feedback bolstered Jamie's own sagging self-esteem somewhat. Not that she blamed her friend for any of her problems; on the contrary, Jamie was relieved to learn that, although she had made a fundamental Heisenberg error, she hadn't lost it completely, could pick up the pieces and make progress. She knew that her team sensed her loss of control; that would change for the better. But if the implants were still active... As if on a signal, the bench Jamie sat upon fell into shadow. She looked up to see the silhouette of a rotund man blotting out the sun. In her peripheral vision she caught husky men in dark glasses standing just outside of earshot, hands folded, watching. The shadow-caster spoke in a greasily pleasant voice, a cross between an evangelist and Torquemada: "Good morning, ah, Jamie, isn't it? Sorry to be so familiar, but we don't know your surname." She instantly recognized the sleazy elocution: Albert Hinterland, the slime who had broken into the studio and stolen her property under the pretense of "law". Jamie finished connecting her dots. Active implants, stolen receiver, ergo, she had been located. All she wondered now was why it had taken them so long to find her. "Mind if I sit down?" His rear was already in motion as he asked that, and the bench groaned under his weight. "Had a dickens of a time finding you. You're pretty good at hiding, my dear..." "I'm not your dear!" "Pretty good, but not perfect. I don't know what you're carrying that puts out a signal that we can track. Maybe I'll ask my associates to search you for it--I'm sure it's illegal. Or will be. But I hope we can come to an agreement making that search unnecessary." Jamie peered into those beady eyes buried in puffy cheeks and sagging jowls. He certainly looked better on camera; in person Hinterland was evidence that living turds walk the Earth. "What kind of agreement?" she asked, eyes narrowed to thin slits. He leaned back on the bench, causing further mechanical stress for it. In a manner reminiscent of a certain pompous professor she had had back at University, Hinterland drawled, "Everything is negotiation, Miss.

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Everything. You buy a car or a house, you dicker over the price, haggle over the terms, debate the rates. When you're married you and your spouse argue over the budget, nights out apart, vacation plans, where to live, even the color of the living room, or if the peanut butter is plain or crunchy. The husband wants this in bed, the wife that." Like any woman would have this grotesque lump, she thought. "When I run for office I give this constituency this promise, and a different constituency a different, perhaps even contradictory promise. You're a bright girl, you must have guessed this." Jamie answered with one word from her past: "duh." "Hell, when a man buys a whore, he has to negotiate the price. Twenty dollars for a hand job, fifty for a blow..." "You certainly go for cheap whores!" Hinterland chuckled. "Maybe. Maybe I can just hustle a hundreddollar whore down. Now take me; I'm a thousand-dollar whore, maybe a ten-thousand-dollar one, sometimes a million dollar hooker. And sometimes the currency isn't cash, it's a word in the right ear, a law written or ignored. Take that little investigation we did down in Burbank." Jamie scowled. "Investigation! Try breaking and entering, violating the Fourth Amendment!" Hinterland tutted. "See? Just my point. I negotiated right around that little obstacle. Oh, those Liberty Party types, whom I'd guess are friends of yours, would protest, but my people have a 100-year-old deep network to fall back on. Bill of Rights? Just an illusion, easily dispelled, should we need something vital. I needed something: public indignation. I needed an injustice to fight, and you had one." "What!? We weren't doing anything illegal, immoral, or otherwise..." The politician interrupted. "Sure you were! Not that I really knew what it was when I started, but I negotiated with the media and the public, and they found that injustice. You and your mind-controlled juvenile sex slaves. Surely you heard that on the news?" "Bullshit!" "So what if it was? I made a contract with my people: I'll root out this evil if you'll vote for me. Look at my numbers before and after. I'll probably slam those Liberty incumbents this November. Yes, my dear..." "I'm not your 'dear'!" "Hmmph. Irregardless"--Jamie winced--"you see that I'm right. Everything is negotiation. Which brings us to you. Like I said, I'll most likely win this Fall, between my numbers and the coattails of Congressman Doltman. People are ready for change. They've been on their own long enough, and they're ready to be cared for again. This whole experiment in self-reliance is about to fail. But I'd like some insurance, something to

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hurry things along. You've successfully eluded the bureaucracy up until this moment. I've found you through that transmitter you always carry"-Jamie cursed silently--"and now I've got you cornered. Negotiations are not always friendly, Miss--what did you say your last name is?" "I didn't!" "And there's the currency of the day. Pay me this bill, let me put you into the system, and I won't find a law today with which to detain you and your lovely colleague." "That's it, my name?" "Well, yes, and a DNA sample and retinal scan. Perhaps some biographical and financial data. Ever since your kind did away with Social Security and its data system, we've had a hard time keeping files on everybody. Leverage is much more easily obtained when we have a complete dossier on everyone, some data we can append, spin, or whatever for, ah, persuasion purposes." Jamie considered. This slime said "colleague", singular. Did he know about the other three? Also, he seems to be involved with that Doltman idiot, who is pestering the ZPEXRL group with whom Dr. Vong is working. What price privacy? If it was really just her last name, she could fake that. But DNA and retinal scan too? She had to consider how that would impact her former self. As a child in the Real World Jamie had been logged into the bureaucracy as a matter of course, as all children of the last century had, infringing on their privacy before they were old enough to know any different. When Jamie was born parents were still naive enough to think that the governmental involvement in child-rearing was a good thing. By the time this fallacy was evident it was too late; a whole generation, hers, was stored in the Republicratic database. That meant that Hinterland would find two apparently people with identical DNA and retinal signatures. What would be the consequences of this? Traveling back along a Mobius Loop had isolated her from prying eyes, allowing her to move anonymously, manipulate funds, and generally exist outside the system. This whole project had to be completed quickly; because of the Loop's geometry Jamie was constrained to this time frame. She couldn't have found a junction earlier to give them more time, and she couldn't pull out now and try again. She was committed. "Penny for your thoughts, dear." Jamie steamed, "Cut out that 'dear' shit, and give me a moment to think." "A moment more is all you have, dear." The sweating official motioned to the well-dressed thugs who moved in closer, one opening an attaché case to reveal ID equipment and a link. She had to quickly make some guesses. It would take them time to assimilate this information, time to discover the anomaly, time to act upon

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it. Would her team achieve their goal before these goons shut everything down, and before their comrades launched their disastrous nuclear folly? The blow to her confidence that her Heisenberg mistake had dealt still hindered Jamie's insight and decisiveness. If only... "Miss..." "Walters," she lied quickly, "Jamie Elizabeth Walters." Maybe it would slow them up a bit. She couldn't have these morons stumble on their Berkeley setup, and she certainly didn't want them to trace the leak in their slush funds too soon. A competent accountant, armed with enough personal information about her, might be able to link their finances with hers. "See dear? That wasn't so difficult. Of course, we'll have to check that out, after we get a sample from you." The thug with the ID gear took a scraping from Jamie's fingernail and a lock of her auburn hair. They made her stare into the retinal scan device, and took her fingerprint for good measure. Little was said during the identity rape. Finally, his earlier feigned civility aside, Hinterland croaked, "Well that's about it for now. It's getting too hot for me out here anyway. Thanks for your cooperation, Miss Walters. We'll be in touch, I'm sure." I'm sure. She hoped that this dull-witted toad would keep to his word and not try to detain her, or find Kathryn, and ultimately James, Sareena, and Billy, and arrest them on some fallacious charge. She hoped all he wanted was to prosecute some loony public vendetta against her alone. No! What was she thinking? Of course he would go for every indecent act he could, to further his pitiful candidacy. Now there was even more pressure on her friends and colleagues. Hinterland would strike, maybe before JMS 2032, maybe after. It didn't matter: the Devil was coming with a hand basket and a travel voucher. It was all a matter of time.

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Chapter 36 Al Hinterland gloated during the entire flight back to LA, and during the whole limo ride to his campaign headquarters. He could allow himself this indulgence because he had just sewn up the election; he could now milk this manufactured controversy all the way to November. Normally people wouldn't care what eggheads were doing as long as it didn't mess up their weekends. Ignorance is bliss, and Al's constituency was very happy, unless he told them otherwise. Like now. His small cadre of disenchanted voters had infected the majority through highly visible demonstrations and his own skillful manipulation of the press. Now public indignation over the "immorality" of human interface technology had spread to general distrust of any brainiac who opposes the Doltman effort to save the Moon, and Hinterland could focus this distrust like a laser beam onto any intellectual activity. And the Liberty Party was rife with intellectuals. Al was sure that Ms. Walters had lied about her name, and the voice-stress analyzer he had carried hidden in his pocket had confirmed this. People not trained to fabricate lies could not fool his mechanical truthsayer, not like I can, he thought. No matter, biometrics would not lie. Jamie, for she hadn't lied about that name, might be too young for a Social Security brand, but her DNA might just be on file. Just after the turn of the century Congress had managed to pass a law requiring doctors to turn over confidential medical records "in the name of public safety", really to keep tabs on the citizenry. (Of course, this data was "destroyed" when the law was declared unconstitutional in 2016. Yeah right!) This woman was a kid at the time, and had given up her DNA during routine childhood inoculations, pinning a birth certificate on her, and her real name. Parents could be located and pressured for "statements", exboyfriends or husbands could be located (or invented) and paid off for incriminating "evidence". A documented bad reputation, along with emotional personal attacks from jilted lovers, would bolster the character assassination he was planning for her. Ms. "Walters" was also obviously college educated, so once her real name was established a trace of her finances could be made--no one had paid cash for college in a hundred years. A money trail could be established and found to be "illegal". That equipment he liberated in Burbank spoke of deep pockets; had she financed something new up in San Francisco? Did she have more than that one sex-surrogate working for her? Were they involved in some vast conspiracy of virtual-sex slavery? No telling what perversions those mental types might think up. Oh this is a fucking gold mine! Al thought, amused by his own pun.

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All in all, his plan to vilify this woman, her intellectual cronies, and by inference, the reigning Liberty Party, couldn't fail. Furthermore, this grass-roots reaction to science and scientists fed the furor his nephew's congressman had started. He would be sure to point this out to Ernie; no telling how much gratitude he could wring from Doltman and his party bosses. His nephew was doing well for himself in DC, and the flow of cash had started, ear-marked for local "spontaneous activism." Doltman had requested, through Ernie, that he target the CalTech people who were working on that silly Zero Point what-the-hell-ever project they were building. His contact, Ginny Cesar, had been his mole there, and had pinpointed the location of the project: the newly finished Thorne building right near Beckman Auditorium. Good! Better than something up in Bishop. He'd organize a vocal rabble to protest the "ELF's" and "EMP's" that emanated from the facility. Were there any such emanations? Who cares! They were bogeymen he could resurrect from the last century to concern the populace. Hmmmm, he considered. Is there a way I can tie in this with my pet demon, Ms. Walters? What could she be doing in the Bay Area? What's up there? San Francisco State? Cal Berkeley? Maybe, just maybe. Hinterland called up his research staff and set them to investigate any links between what CalTech is doing and the goings-on at Berkeley. I've already done the groundwork on Walters. If I could create a conspiracy. Gees! It keeps getting better and better. Christmas in July! Al's mind raced. If Doltman's Hammer works, or as long as it doesn't fuck up, he'll have presidential credibility. If I give him another cause, a conspiracy of intellectuals to fight, it'll be a free ride outa this local shit all the way to DC. Hey! Doltman'll need a running mate. With Ernie in his ear, and this prize dumped in his lap, I'll be a real contender in 2036. Together we can bring back order to the chaos of personal freedom, and our citizens will be all the more content. Best put on a "screama in Pasadena"!

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Chapter 37 Kathryn took the next day off. The talk she and Jamie had had weighed so heavily on her mind that she couldn't concentrate on the task at hand. In fact, Billy's device registered unexpected results during that test, so he needed a day to sort things out anyway. The night before James had told her about the events leading to the sudden hostility her friend had shown towards him and that girl. He seemed more surprised than hurt, perhaps because of the brevity of the outburst, more likely because he was just clueless about women, she thought. However, knowing that always-cool Jamie had exploded only added to her own guilt. Had she somehow precipitated this episode? What had she said to Jamie to release such anger? And why at James and the girl? It's almost what I would have said, given the situation. Kathryn's emotional state made for a cold bed that night. Typically, James didn't seem to notice. Kathryn feigned sleep when James got up to work on his math, mumbled a goodbye when he left for the day, got up to check messages, then hid under the covers until early afternoon. Habit, not ambition, prompted her out of bed and into the summer day. Her shield against reality became sloppy make-up, unflattering clothing, and dark sunglasses; Kathryn wanted no one to look at her. She had no appetite, but needed some caffeine, so she slunk down to the same coffee bar as the day before. Maybe she had left some clue to her feelings there. Damn! she mused. What's gone wrong this time? Is it me? First I bail on the actress idea, then I slum for a decade with Leon only to become a virtual sex surrogate. Now I have the chance to do something important, and I go and fall into a relationship that is going nowhere. And I might have dragged my one good friend in many years down with me. Jamie. Who the hell is she anyway? Here I put all sorts of trust in her, but I really don't know much about her, where she comes from, her family, where she gets all that money. Does she have a lover she visits when she vanishes so mysteriously? She sat drinking coffee and thinking, trying to be invisible to the other customers who came and went in a steady flow. Kathryn observed the interaction between them and the staff, the give and take of business people talking during their break, the personal communication in couples. She couldn't actually hear what was being said, but it wasn't necessary to have the details to follow the conversations. Perhaps, she decided, knowledge of someone is not limited to the particulars of circumstance. Perhaps it is limited by the particulars of circumstance. So, regardless of Jamie's background, she trusted her girlfriend, and felt bad that she had somehow pushed her over some personal limit.

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But I can't be responsible for her anger, any more than she is responsible for my disillusionment. Ah HA! That's it: I'm disillusioned with the way things are turning out! I've been projecting things into this evolutionary step Jamie says we're about to make. I must have expected some kind of nirvana with this ascension into her Greater World, and it might still get that way, but ascension itself is not perfection. For one, it's not insulation against emotional mistakes. What was I thinking? All the while we've been working on this project did I think that we would be leaving personal foibles behind, that we'd somehow become better, not bring along any old baggage? I guess I did. How wrong I was! No one in the coffee bar noticed the minor epiphany that engulfed Kathryn at that moment. Coming to an understanding of her state of mind eased her feelings of guilt and her disillusionment at unfulfillable expectations. I guess people will always be people, whether they have transcended reality or not. Sipping and mulling, mulling and sipping, Kathryn's face finally relaxed into a sardonic smile, her closest approach to happiness in many days, an expression unseen by the other patrons in the bar. She nursed three coffees and a bagel over three hours. After the third coffee the waiter ignored her, which suited her just fine; it was the end of his shift anyway and he left without even a nod of acknowledgment for the generous tip. No matter. The day had nearly passed into evening when, as if on cue, Jamie arrived. To Kathryn, her friend seemed worried but more like the old, familiar Jamie, more in control. You could see it in her eyes, tell it in her walk as she marched up to Kathryn's table without even looking around. "Hey! How did I know you'd be here?" "You tell me, hon. You always seem to have insider information on so many things." Sitting down across from Kathryn Jamie sighed, "Well, I seem to have lost my touch recently. And because of that, things have heated up even more." "Wait, before you tell me more bad news, tell me why you blew up at Sareena and James yesterday, not that they didn't deserve it." How telling that statement is, she thought. Jamie wasn't ready to reveal that the feedback loop with her friend was the cause of that incident. She'd be reticent to continue the MIVI trials at this critical time. Now, when Kathryn was for the first time stretching reality without instruments, though she was unaware of it. "Oh. Well, I guess I'm a bit too empathetic with my best buddy," which brought a smile to the eyes if not the mouth of the MIVI pilot. "I

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owe them a major apology." At this point the night shift waitress came over, took Jamie's order and scurried off. "Well, I didn't want anything anyway," huffed Kathryn. "OK, so what's the bad news?" "I've just had a very bad talk with a very bad man, one Albert Hinterland." "THAT ASSHOLE!?" Even her outburst didn't attract any attention, Jamie observed. "Yeah, him, Sphynctorious Maximus. Evidently the Thumb implants were a little more durable than Billy calculated, and he had his techies trace me with our stolen equipment. He found me in Exhibition Park. Had me cornered, with two heavy suits to back him up. I gave him a fake name, but he took biometrics, so it's only a matter of time before he tracks me, my finances, and my contacts: us. I’ve learned Doltman's party has already started organizing protests outside the CalTech ZPEXRL Project. They'll probably leave the Owens Valley alone since it's too remote for good press coverage, but I expect the protests to begin here soon after, followed by trumped-up charges to start bogus investigations. That'll shut us down for sure." Kathryn was stunned into silent rage. She had never been a political animal, but now she saw that, since she was in the line of fire, oldschool politics were about to shoot her down. It wasn't any of their damn business! Shit! "How much does he know?" "Well, he doesn't know about Billy, James, or Sareena, I'm sure. And his only take on MIVI was the Thumb equipment he stole from us. But that's more than enough to make trouble." It was at this point that Kathryn noticed people beginning to stare at Jamie. Hushed, she bent forward, "Do you see..." "Yes. We need to leave. Let me finish this..." she downed her drink "...and go find the others." Kathryn sighed, mostly to herself, "Dammit! And we are so close! Everything is falling apart." She looked ready to cry. "Not everything, dear heart." Only Jamie realized that Kathryn had reached a milestone that day. No one else could see it, or her.

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Chapter 38 "No ELFs in our forest!" "Luddites are people too!" "We don't need no EMPs!" "Ban the Brainiacs!" The scene outside the Thorne building was loud and raucous, especially so since the national media was covering the story. Chief of Staff Martirez had clued in the right people for that. Now, via video feeds to DC and Burbank, he and his uncle in separate cities surveyed their handiwork. "Cute how you got your people to embrace the term 'Luddite'. It's now a badge of honor to them," Ernie complimented Al. "I doubt that any of them know the origin of the word. Hell, even I had to look it up, and I've got a degree in Political Science." "Well, words are what you make of them. You're too young to remember, but at one time 'nature', 'green', and 'organic' were big medicine. Invoke and embrace any of them on an issue and your numbers would soar. Speaking of numbers, I see that your boss is polling very well. He looks unstoppable." "Yes, I think we've started a revolution. And he'll take as many party members along as possible. Which brings up another subject. I know we can count on your support--you've already done so much for us as it is-but it'd be nice to have a long-term plan, to keep us on the same page. You know, something we can keep in our back pocket. Oh, Doltman's Hammer will be good for a couple of years, but it's an over-and-done thing. Maybe you can help. We need something we can ride for decades. You know, like that War on Drugs last century. They dragged that out for, what, forty years?" Hinterland nodded through his phone. "More successful than the Cold War, because the opposition couldn't capitulate. Rode that issue for years." Now here Al had to be coy. He had been thinking about creating just such a long-lived issue to tie him to the national party, but it wouldn't do to be too up front with his ideas; they might lose their authorship. Ernie was family, but this was politics. "Good thinking, lad. I like it. Hmmm." He appeared to lose himself in thought, a well-practiced ploy. "What do you have in mind?" "Don't know, don't know." The two sat on opposite sides of the country, watching the more rowdy members of the crowd urinate on the landscaping, so confident of the righteousness of their cause. "Maybe some kind of patriotic campaign." Al wasn't keen on this. "That worked for a while back in the 50's with the Red Scare, but it didn't last long, and it backfired bad on McCarthy. Besides, we have no national enemies anymore. Something like a moral crusade works better. Yes, a crusade. It's harder to attack, and

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more malleable." He had his whole cyber-sex-slave conspiracy in mind, but let him fish for it. "OK, I'll think about it." The crowd had now barricaded the doors of the Thorne building and were pulling down the temporary WAN antennae. The camera swung to the campus police who were frantically trying to dislodge the rabble. Pasadena police were, somehow, not in attendance. "Any other news?" "Yes, as a matter of fact. My own private campaign is doing well; you know I tracked down that woman who owns, excuse me, owned the laboratory in Burbank?" he smirked. "Yes, bravo!" "Thank you. Well, my staff hasn't found much on her yet, only some contradictory evidence that identifies her as a man born early last century. Don't know how she did that, but we'll find out who she is shortly. More interesting is that we found her in San Francisco. My guys have discovered that Berkeley also has one of these Zero Point thingies, though I don't think it's a laser. If I can tie her up with this project here in Pasadena, we can add "sexual perversion cartel" to our crowd's placards." Ernie brightened. "Now there's an idea! Do you think we could inject guilt back in the public mind? Nothing stirs up controversy like a good public guilt-fest. Outrage at their neighbor's actions, actions that they wish they could do themselves. Good, old-fashioned moral indignation. And what better to be indignant about than anything other than procreative sex? I remember seeing early television programs where even married couples slept in separate beds. If we could get back to the idea that sex for pleasure was evil, could re-illegalization of intoxicants be far behind? Perhaps a pan-fundamentalist revival too: most proper religions frown on sex and drugs anyway. You know people are always happier when someone else decides what's right and wrong for them. Saves them from all that tiresome soul-searching. So we could be their "moral compass" for years to come!" Al was pleased. His nephew had taken the bait, and since Ernie thought that it was his own idea, authorship, and the perks that go with it, was secured. "We can bring back politically correct speech, even correct thoughts, make people feel guilty about just about anything. Hell, we could reintroduce censorship, limit the words and ideas that people are allowed to say in public. They'd love it! Finger-wagging has long been favorite hobby of the masses." The veteran politician was on a roll, like a gambler winning big at the tables. "And the opposition will be helpless; they won't be able to use rationality in such an emotional debate." Ernie caught the fever. "And, we can make billions from the underground economy that will spring up to fill the void. No matter what is said in the open, people will still want contraband, and that reopens the

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door for, let's call them, "entrepreneurs". They will all need insulation, protection from the Law, you know. Phew!" he gasped, "Outstanding! Yes, I think we've hit upon a capitol plan, Uncle, a capitol plan." Al was pleased to hear "we've". "I've...wait a minute. Let me put you on hold, my boy" One of Hinterland's techies just handed him a paper. Martirez silently watched the crowd trample the shrubbery and smear obscenities across doors of the Thorne building as Al read the message. "Good news! I have a name attached to that Zero Point gadget in Berkeley: Dr. Hai Vong. The interesting thing is that a couple of months ago she phoned the very same lab we raided in Burbank. Strange, that place had no outgoing call records attached to it at all, even though they were wired. But we knew the number there, and this Vong person called it. Now, that doesn't mean that my Miss Walters is involved with that laser scam, but there definitely is a relation between the two, and that's all I need to get the ball rolling. Guilt by association, "all scientists are perverts". Time to move: can you give a call to your people up in the Bay Area? I'll need warm bodies for the coming protest march." "Sure, sure, no problem. My folks'll be there.” Hmmph Ernie thought. “You know, there's always been a big back-to-nature socialist movement there, even during the last fifteen years, just more underground." The video screen showed the rabble ripping the plaque of dedication off the wall. "They've been antithetical to us in the past, but I think we could turn them to our side for this. Tap into the old No Nukes remnants. That Zero Point stuff--it's newcular, isn't it?" "Must be. Even if it isn't, no one will know the difference." "Yeah, right. Let me poke around a bit. What's your timeline?" "Soon, probably a week or so." "Great!" Finally, the local police showed up on the CalTech campus and dispersed the crowd. Ernie commented, "Couldn't let our crowd get too out of hand. It would reduce their credibility. Anyway, we'll talk soon. I have a good feeling about this." Al Hinterland chuckled inwardly and outwardly about two different things. "So do I lad, so do I."

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Chapter 39 Before Jamie gathered the group together to tell them of the latest bad news-something she dreaded, since she hadn't delivered good news for quite a while--she needed to have a private talk with James, and Sareena especially. She didn't want to blame the accidental feedback-loop for her behavior, and she was beginning to think that she it would be a bad idea to ever reveal anything about it. James would quickly deduce that Kathryn had been privy to an unknown number of private conversations; it would be Kathryn's business whether or not to discuss it with him. And while Sareena wouldn't be spooked by the idea, she'd never be able to keep the secret from her tutor/crush. Therefore Jamie went back to the coding bungalow and classroom, virtual hat in hand, and, hugging both tightly, apologized profusely. She explained that growth into Mentor status didn't turn one into an emotionless thinking machine. The stresses and pressures of life didn't evaporate; there still would be things beyond your control. Not wanting to go through her apologia twice, she squeezed them both again and asked them to wait until they all met the next day at Billy's lab. So out-of-character had Jamie's recent anger been that teacher and student provisionally accepted her apology. James, in a typically masculine manner, intellectually understood that seeing that hitherto hidden side of his friend should make them closer. Well, it didn't, but neither had it forced them apart any. He had huge emotional inertia and was neither bonding tighter with her because of her anger nor smarting from the sting of her wrath. Other than a mild curiosity about the stimulus for Jamie's unusual behavior, James had written the incident off as part of her general malaise of the past month or so. Then again, he had not been the primary target of the outburst; Sareena had, and she was still quite young, despite her apparent maturity. It would take time for her hurt to heal. She took a cue from her teacher and would try to put it behind her. They convened in the anteroom of Billy's workshop early the next morning, where the atmosphere was tense, for several reasons. They were expecting some major announcement from Jamie, hopefully explaining her behavior. Billy had some issue he needed to discuss; as elated as he was about their recent successes, he was beginning to fear the repercussion if they really did achieve what Jamie had describe for them all those months ago. Furthermore, they had all seen the footage of the mob at CalTech. It was very unnerving, as rumors of a similar demonstration close to home were circulating in the alternative newspapers. Jamie was the last to arrive, and she went around to each and squeezed their hands. "My friends, I've been acting poorly the last couple of weeks, months really, at a time when I needed to be especially together

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for you. You've all worked on tirelessly despite me, and I thank you for that. It's so important, so much more important than even I thought when we first met last Fall." "But I've been less than inspiring or helpful recently, and I've got to say I'm real sorry for that. I've gone through some major changes in the last year or so, changes I still am getting used to, and it sometimes catches up with me. Moreover, it's interfered with my concentration, and I've made a couple of really bad errors in judgment. Primarily, I lost track of the fact that my presence here alters the reality I had anticipated. Now, I know you're probably thinking 'duh, of course it does', but the influence is on a very fundamental level, more than just the obvious interaction between us as people." Her friends were quiet as she continued. "This sophomoric oversight has endangered our project, because it's allowed the man who raided Kathryn's and my studio in Burbank to trace me here. His name is Al Hinterland, and he's a candidate for councilman in Burbank looking for a bogeywoman to scare the voters with: me. Ultimately he'll trace my accounts, and eventually he'll find all of us. Now, you've done nothing illegal, but that doesn't matter at all. He's a political animal, and legality is infinitely malleable to him, and that makes him a menace." Sareena asked, "How did he find you?" Kathryn looked up; she had been doggedly holding her man's hand, making it her center of attention. But she awoke to the question and answered, "Jamie and I were testing equipment Billy made for Jamie. This man confiscated it when he broke in, and it led him to her." Jamie thought, Brilliant! She’s guessed the real reason! But does she suspect a feedback loop too? James spoke up. "Wait a minute. You're saying that some politician is trying to turn you into a criminal?" "Yeah." "But you haven't done anything unlawful?" "Nope." Well, Jamie had been stealing from thieves; was that illegal? Regardless, it wasn't what Hinterland was going on about. "He managed to get some judge down there to invoke an old law that allowed him to break in the Studio, but there was nothing there he could arrest us on." Billy snorted, "So what can he do?" "He's trying to invent a crime, make something up that he can nail me on. Failing that, along with Congressman Doltman and company, he's whipping up the population, turning them into a mob against scientists, philosophers, anyone who's highly educated. Those that we know are future Mentors. These people don't think rationally, they just react to what Doltman and others tell them. Truth be told, fifteen years ago, when the

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Liberty Party won the presidency, these same mobs were just reacting to the rationalists, doing what they were told back then. The number of protoMentors had risen to the point where we could influence enough people to win electoral majority, just barely,” she said, then almost to herself, “and I feel that our brief experiment in personal liberty is just about over." Jamie went on, "Logic, cause and effect--those are elusive and ephemeral concepts to EveryMan, and forcing them into that mode created a state of unstable equilibrium. This brief interlude of sanity is coming to a close. In a way it's a new racism, a pogrom, but they don't understand that it is. They can't. They haven't a clue that a small branch, a twig of the family tree, is growing in a different direction. It may eventually fall off and grow independently; who knows? The fact is that, though we still look like them, we are different." This jarred Billy, and brought to mind the issue he had been brooding over since last winter. "Jamie, all this talk about evolution. I mean, I don't know. You know, I'm kinda of an independent guy. Oh, I like working with you guys, don't get me wrong, but I'm really doing my thing here. I'm kinda worried about this gestalt stuff you've talked about. It has some weird kind of communal sound to it. Now, I value my individuality, who I am. I don't wanna lose that. I don't wanna be just another chip in an array, if you know what I mean." Jamie softened. "Billy, remember that seafood pizza in Bandon? I told you that your musicianship would be an important factor here?" "Yeah." "Well, when you play in a band, you are integrated into the ensemble. You're a vital part to the music, but you never loose your personality, do you? You never forget who you are. 'Billy' never dies, does he?" "No." "Well, we’re not all going to be psychically linked. We aren’t now—there was no ethereal mass mind-meld instigating our various projects. And it won’t happen if, no, when we succeed. The opposite, really. It's strange to say, but your own individuality, your own true sense of self, manifests itself profoundly. I was shocked at that manifestation myself, when I first awoke to a Greater World." More she did not say about that. "But I'm dealing with it, getting used to it, even enjoying it. Hon, there's nothing to worry about there, trust me. This problem with Hinterland, Doltman, and their cronies, that's something to worry about." Kathryn, who continued to mope, looking at James, then the floor, then James again, mumbled, "Yeah, well, what can we do about it? "You guys? Not much. I'll run interference as best I can, and you all keep pushing the project. Just what you want, right? More pressure, I

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know. But the bottom line is, if they trace you through me, and if they get organized, what happened at Tech can happen here." This was more than Jamie had said to them as a group than she had in the last two months. The MIVI team, although worried about the consequences of the Machiavellian machinations of these politicians, was visibly relieved that Jamie was back to the Jamie they knew. She continued, "I was going to..." At that moment the lights flickered once, then again, then the anteroom, Billy's lab, Berkeley, and the entire region from the Bay Area down to Santa Cruz went back to pre-industrial natural lighting.

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Chapter 40 "I know, I know, but what will it do to our numbers?" Congressman Doltman was staring at the first reports scrolling on the monitor next to the face of his chief of staff. The face spoke: "I think we got to the media in time for damage control." Breaking news had interrupted the morning game and talk shows with live coverage of the test firing into polar orbit of a Doltman Hammer rocket pack from the old Vandenburg Air Force Launch facility. After the missile ménage e trois disappeared above the Pacific clouds, the networks, having reached the three-minute attention span limit, returned to their regularly scheduled programming. Consequently, when the one of the aged rockets failed, hurtled back to Earth and destroyed the San Gregorio power plant and denied Central California TV viewers their daytime dramas, not to mention silencing every other electrically run appliance and industry, there was no national coverage. It also hobbled the local media so that the military and Republicratic politicians had time to interject their own explanations. "It's a good thing that rocket had no warhead," returned Ernie Martirez, "Think of the consequences! We'd never be able to cover it up. The cloud would be seen for miles. Damn bad luck that it fell on that plant." Doltman sat for a minute. "Hmm, no explosion? Just an impact? Several dozen 'loyal' workers killed?" "True enough. Of course, power outages north to almost Sacramento. Only temporary though." "Maybe we can turn this to our advantage. What if we say a piece of that meteor fell on the power plant? It would make this whole thing seem all the more real, make our efforts seem all that more heroic. Hey, it's already taken the lives of good honest working people." Ernie had to admire the savvy of his boss. What balls! Turning a major disaster into a political selling point. "What about the wreckage? Someone's sure to find rocket parts." "Have the military cordon off the area. Call it an environmental catastrophe. I checked; I know San Gregorio is natural gas fueled, but we can say that the meteor is radioactive or something." Ernie lit up. "Sure! We've never used that angle before. That'll keep everyone away. We can say it's got a, what d'ya call it? A half-life of 50 years. That'll keep everyone away for a century." "Good thinking, boy. So what if you didn't pass that Physical Science class?" Ernie's eyes widened. "Ha ha! Yes, I did read your

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transcripts! Don't worry; you learned enough important stuff to help us out here big time." Congressman Doltman sat back in his chair. "I'll call a General who owes me big time out there, have him deploy his men. You get a press conference set up for the noon news, West Coast time. Get me something sincere to say too, not too long. I plan on being overcome with grief for our loss." "Will do boss." Ernie signed off and immediately went to work, still marveling at the keen political acumen of that congressman, and maybe future president.

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Chapter 41 Shortly after the lights went out, a boom, then a muffled rumble shook Billy's lab. His equipment, shielded from power surges by a hefty UPS, shut down politely. Sareena was first to breathe. "What was that? An earthquake?" "There's not supposed to be any..." Jamie said, mostly to herself. Given her recent revelations she was hesitant to rely on her memory. "That first noise was a sonic boom." But the blast? Billy spoke. "I'd say that the other noise was a power plant explosion, seeing as how we're in the dark. But the nearest plant is, oh, sixty-seventy miles away. We'd never be able to hear a blast from this far away, not unless every cubic foot of gas went off at the same time. I've got a friend working there, it's the San Gregorio Power Plant. She told me once that there are too many safety valves, and the tanks are too far apart, for that to happen. Not unless a big bomb..." Billy stopped and stared at Jamie. "Do you think someone blew up the plant?" "Well, I wouldn't put it past Hinterland, or Doltman, but it would serve no purpose." "Let me get my Sat-Link off my bike. Maybe we can find something on-line about it." Billy left to retrieve his gear as the group adjourned to a brighter room. "Good thing I charged this yesterday. Hadn't been using it recently, but I had a notion that I might need it." He couldn't share it with the rest, so he donned the headset and called up a search engine of the standard news outlets. Most were silent about the event, so brief a time had elapsed since the outage, but after about five minutes word began to leak out. A newsanchor avatar popped up in his virtual space, relaying the latest news. "Something has fallen onto the San Gregorio plant. No telling what," Billy reported. "That'd be about the only thing that could take out the whole thing at once," he mumbled worriedly. Clearly he was thinking about his friend there. "That would explain the shock wave," said Jamie. She wanted to say something to Billy about his friend, but he was still in NetSpace and couldn't hear. "Some guy, that congressman you mentioned, will be speaking shortly about it. Why not the President?" asked the engineer. Jamie answered his question to the others. "Because he must have had some foreknowledge of this, and had already scheduled the press conference. Boy! That'll hurt our President in the polls. His last year of his first term? His electoral demise is already being orchestrated. Like I said, our brief epoch of rationality is coming to a close."

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The lights flickered on, then back off as the power company struggled to compensate for the loss of wattage. Billy pulled off his gear. "I've got to call Selena," referring to his friend at power plant. He checked his phone; it showed signal. "I think the Sat system is unaffected, since I can access the Net from here." He went off to the side, out of earshot of the others, who sat in silence. Long minutes went by as Kathryn held James' hand, and Sareena looked confused and annoyed simultaneously. Jamie held her head in her hands, wondering what could happen next that she had not foreseen. Billy came back with a look of relief clear to all. "Selena was driving to the plant when I called. Her power's out too." Just then the lights and equipment in the lab flashed on confidently. "She..." His phone rang. "Yeah?...What!...How many? OK, keep in touch. Bye babe." Billy looked at Jamie. "Selena got to the plant, and there're soldiers blocking the gate! From what she says, they're trying to get the place surrounded. Helicopters are landing all over the facility. What the hell is going on?" Kathryn had finally let go of James to go inside and turn on the TV. Jamie peered into the anteroom and said, "I don't know, but the local junk news is all a-twitter about something." At Billy's command wallscreen had fluttered to life and adjusted itself to display several of the local channels as well as a network feed. All except one showed an empty podium with an expectant microphone. (The lone holdout had refused to break away from its midday show, "Baby Showers Around the World".) He had muted the sound until something happened, but all the adults in the room could imagine the grave, hushed tones from the various voice-over reporters, not unlike commentators at a golf tournament. When a (freshly) disheveled Congressman Doltman stumbled up to the mic Billy unmuted one of the news channels, but just for contrast he left the picture of "Baby Showers" on the wall. The politician spoke: "I don't know where to begin. We believe that the unthinkable has happened. We believe that a piece of the object that is hurtling towards an immanent collision with our fair Moon has broken off and crashed to Earth." He paused while the crowd of reporters gasped as one. In Berkeley Jamie spoke first. "Bullshit! Asteroids don't randomly fall apart. Besides," she thought for a moment, "JMS 2032's trajectory is all wrong. Maybe something fell, but not part of that asteroid." "Sshh!" hushed Kathryn with a wink as Doltman continued. "Regrettably, our nation's astronomers gave us no warning of this impending disaster." He silently praised Ernie for that dig. "Fortunately, the giant rock didn't land on a highly populated area, or the damage and loss of life would have been much, much worse. But as it is, the event is a

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major catastrophe for California, and indeed the nation. Because, comrades, this piece from the hell of space smashed and utterly destroyed the recently completed San Gregorio Central Power Station, plunging the mid-California Coast up to the Bay Area into darkness." The contradiction in this last statement, given that the impact occurred midday, was lost in the drama of the speech. "But it's worse than that friends. For this rock from space was radioactive, emitting lethal M-rays..." Jamie exploded. "Utter fucking bull-fucking-shit! Oops, sorry Sareena. Asteroids are not radioactive, and there's no such thing as freaking M-rays! What the hell..." "SShhhhh!!" "...in time. With the critical assistance of General Bruce Lloyd of the Air Attack Rangers, the crash site is surrounded, and we'll keep everyone safe, not to worry. The government will be there to clean up the radioactive debris and dispose of it properly. But..." Doltman turned away from the cameras and appeared to break down. "... excuse me. But there is tragedy here. About two dozen power workers of Local 12 were killed in the explosion..." Again he turned away for effect. "This, this disaster on the very day of the first successful test launch from Vandenburg of the missile system that will destroy that damned angel from hell! Excuse me..." Jamie's eyes narrowed. "I smell rat shit, a big steaming pile of it!" Kathryn playfully covered Sareena's ears. The girl wiggled free. "Hey! I've heard all these words before. What are you talking about Jamie?" "I don't think any 'rock from space' fell on San Gregorio. That facility is downrange from Vandenburg for a polar orbital launch. I think their antique rockets failed and did a sub-orbital, falling back down onto the plant. That's why we heard a sonic boom earlier, just before the bang. Hmmm, there's a way to check. Hey Billy, can you call your friend back and ask her if she can get to a high point to check for an impact crater? Only a solid chunk of something would make a noticeable crater. Spent rocket boosters would disintegrate on impact, making no appreciable hole in the ground, but causing all the damage they alluded to." "Sure, I'll call her..." "Gees! You don't think they test fired with a live warhead, do you? Is that radiation he was talking about?" interrupted James. "SSSSSSSHHHHHHHH!" "...Rest assured we will be vigilant, we will endeavor to persevere, and we will prevail. This first attack from space will not deter us. Our missiles will avenge us, and keep Earth...and her daughter...safe!" Doltman shouted between sobs. What a performance! "I'm sorry, I can't say any more now. Excuse me."

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Billy hurriedly muted the wall before the commentors could fall over each other in a contest of melodrama. Jamie ventured, "We can only hope that they aren't that stupid. We can't know unless we get a meter near the site though, and we don't have time for that now." Billy stuck a finger in his other ear while he spoke to Selena. Shortly, "She'll check. There's not much high ground nearby, but she has a RC model plane with a camera. What a girl! She'll take some pictures and let us know." "So what do we do now?" asked Sareena. Math and programming made perfect sense to her, but the arcane motivations of politics, the deceit, the deception--these were things she didn't understand, and never wanted to. Kathryn, back on James' arm, with fearsome resolution, said, "We work."

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Chapter 42 Nothing focuses the mind like the hangman's noose, thought Kathryn. She had kissed James goodbye over an hour ago, but his taste lingered on her lips. Not his own taste really: he started many a morning with a mixture of egg whites and salsa, a recently acquired taste. But Kathryn came to associate that flavor with his kiss. Billy was installing the latest drivers from Sareena into the MIVI engine. The girl frequently worked through the night, coding without any sense of time. It was the way she always worked, and it was what was needed now, immersion in her work. Truth to tell, Sareena had gotten to the point of anticipating the updates before Billy even knew what he needed. She had gotten the ebb and flow, the beat of his enterprise, and they had locked in tighter than any rhythm section ever could. Just as she had played off the cantus firmus of James' mathematics. In that way, she's closer to him than I am, Kathryn thought enviously. She examined that feeling. Envy, not jealousy. Something had changed in the last couple of days. Billy finally rebooted the system and Kathryn put these thoughts from her mind as best she could. She had found it harder and harder to concentrate; ironically, since each successive test got easier and easier for her. She too had established a rapport with the engineer. Each tweak of the equipment made it easier for Kathryn to alter some small aspect of her reality. Billy had watched and listened to his Mobius Space-pilot as she had first changed the color of her hair, then the style of her clothes, her age, finally becoming her Asian alter-ego again a few days ago. He began to pre-sense the delicate balance of power she controlled with her interface to change herself, and adjusted the processors, projectors, generators and interface controls to match Kathryn's paths through Mobius Space. The two moved towards cadence points as surely as any Baroque consort. And the performance hadn’t yet reached the last movement. The goal today was to actually fold local space into a manifold. This was a big step, since it would alter reality for both Billy and herself, and was kind of scary for Kathryn. For if she failed, perhaps nothing would happen, and they'd try again. But if she succeeded, and then failed to control the fold, Billy might be left in an unknown state. However, it was necessary for them both to experience the manifold, so the heat was on. The plan was for both of them to experience Kowloon Park, a replay of the virtual trip that had changed Kathryn's life. Then it had been a simulated experience--stunning in its reality, but virtual nonetheless. Now, she and Billy would actually exist in the park, see the flamingos and the Banyan trees, feel the heat and humidity of Summer in Hong Kong. Kathryn would be in control--hopefully--for the duration, and they would

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leave a sign behind as a reality check. As a double-blind measure, they wouldn't decide on the sign until they had arrived at the park. When Kathryn worked for EVR, she used more-or-less standard force-feedback actuators with an off-the-shelf control surface interface. Billy's Virtual Thumb was only a receiver, albeit highly sophisticated, and the early trials with the new MIVI weren't unusual, being a test of various subsystems. Then they had not tried to manipulate Mobius Space; now all these VR experiences synergized, hopefully giving her the power to alter reality. That she had already been able to physically change herself in the lab last week was an impressive achievement. Sareena's latest patch allowed greater control of the space-bending energy fields from the human interface. Jamie had used subcutaneous implants to transmit biofeedback to Kathryn when they used the Virtual Thumb, but Kathryn wasn't comfortable with implants. Besides, MIVI was about control, not telemetry. From her perspective, neither was all that far from her EVR Body Double. Telemetry and remote control are the yin and yang in the data stream universe, she mused. The interface Billy had built for her was a patch that stuck onto the nape of her neck under her mediumlength blonde hair, with very fine wires under her blouse to a powerful transmitter on her belt. While she did have a panel at her fingertips, it was auxiliary to the inductive sensor over her spinal cord. This way she operated the processors and lensing apparatus that contorted and focused the ZPE flowing from Dr. Vong's generator. Despite the significance of this test, the two worked without fanfare. They went over the checklists, which really was to confirm that the computers had completed their POSTs and had booted the operating system. Next, the processors were given dummy routines to make sure that they were up to handling the huge numbers that James' math and Sareena's drivers required. Early on, they had crashed with the apparent 'divide-byzero' errors that were inevitable when 200th order of magnitude values were used as divisors. Subsequent refinement of Exalogs and the corollary updates of code eliminated these errors, but given the consequences of misdirected energies, Billy took no chances. In fact, he was at the point where he wanted additional human monitoring of the process; next time, he thought. Finally he was satisfied that everything was nominal, and he 'turned on the juice', as he called it. Terawatts of power coursed through the containment field, co-generators catching most of the leakage demanded by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But the equipment couldn't store this energy for long, so he OKed Kathryn to go ahead and 'do her thing'. Just what she did at this time was hard for her to describe. It was a mix of visualizing, subvocalizing, and daydreaming, a conglomeration of all her diverse VR experience. Occasionally she poked at her panel, but

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this was just a manifestation of something she had already envisioned. At first, for a brief moment, she was in a familiar NetSpace, a routine Billy added as a final systems check. All was well, she was in control, and without prelude the lab blinked like a video with a bad connection, once, twice, and the two were standing in Kowloon Park. Billy's first sensation was that of heat: stifling, oppressive, humid heat. He had been born and raised on the West Coast, and had lived in Santa Cruz for years. Cool and damp, that's what he was used to, so saturated, 37oC air struck him like an enormous wet hot-towel. A fraction of a second later he realized Damn! I'm really here! and all heat-related discomfort vanished. "Ho-ly shit! It works!" he cried. "Ho-ly shit!" He looked at his partner. Kathryn was wearing a wry smile, seeming oblivious to their accomplishment. She thought again, Envy, not jealousy. She has a closeness I don't have. Kathryn immediately scolded herself. Stop that! Concentrate on the task at hand! But she could not summon 100% of her mind; it would not obey. A closeness, period. Not a closeness with James, it whispered. SNAP! She winked out of existence for an instant, then back in as she regained her composure. "Hey! Where'd ya go?" Billy's startled cry snapped her to focus, literally. "I turned around and you were gone, then turned around again and you were back. What's going on?" "Nothing, just having a bit of trouble maintaining. You OK?" "Sure, just kinda surprised me. I'm used to that in NetSpace, but we're really here, you know?" "Yeah, we really are," she said with all the awe she could muster. "Let me check that transmitter. Maybe it's dropping data, although there's a transponder nearby." Jamie had recently left one surreptitiously at Sareena's flat. "Seems to be a clean signal, and your gear's operating at spec. Hey! I want to walk around a bit, you know. And leave that message too. But I'm worried about your status. Can you hold on? Do you want me to stick around?" "No, I'll be OK. Don't be gone too long though, just in case." "OK." He was visibly eager. "Back in a few minutes." Billy wandered off to explore the park, leaving Kathryn alone. He had never been to Hong Kong before, and was fascinated, almost giddy. Standing on the bridge over the flamingo pond, Kathryn stared down into the still water. Indian tourists were feeding the fish some distance away, and the ripples hadn't reached her reflection yet. It seemed so long ago that she had "visited" the park on her last job for Exxtasy VR. On a whim, she concentrated and in a blink her Chinese alter-ego was staring up back at

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her from the pond. What did that client see in her, she wondered. What was he---that sneaky woman! It had finally dawned on Kathryn that her last client had been Jamie all along. She had never seen her customer, and even if she had Jamie could have disguised herself in any fashion she chose. "Hmmph," said her Asian reflection. "Why haven't I thought of this already? I was manipulated into this position. And damn, the accent still has me!" Kathryn hated the idea of being controlled, but couldn't bring herself to be angry with Jamie. Their friendship was real, of that she was certain. However, she needed to vent a bit. No one was looking at her. "She became me that day. Ah, revenge is sweet!" Another moment of concentration and the Chinese reflection became Jamie. "Two can play at that game!" She laughed loudly and tossed her long brown hair, causing the Indian tourists to look at her curiously. She could see that appreciation in the eyes of the men in that group. This changing takes almost no effort now. Kathryn-as-Jamie looked back at the water. Hmmmm, maybe like this I can spy on James and Sareena. But she found that she really didn't care about that anymore. So, Maybe I can get you into trouble Miss Jamie; do something embarrassing. Take off my shirt in Exhibition Park, the perfect place for it! But No, you're under enough stress. All the... A revelation was bursting upon her mind. Amazed, Kathryn locked gazes with the Jamie reflection and saw Kathryn looking out from Jamie's face. My God! Was I the cause of her trouble? Did we get linked somehow with the Thumb? Was it a two-way thing? Kathryn thought hard: yin and yang. She remembered the words that James said Jamie had yelled at Sareena and him that day. Exactly what I would have said! Talk about control! The poor girl. Kathryn snapped back to being Kathryn, unconcerned who might be looking. She felt enormously guilty about what she had done, unconsciously, to her best friend. Had Jamie known what was going on at the time? Girl we really need to have a long talk. Shortly Billy came bouncing down the path to the bridge. "I left a message at McDonald's for our verification. It says 'How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?'. Hope that's OK. It's the title of an old song. Shit, you know this is the coolest thing! Nothing in NetSpace compares to it. I can't wait 'til...hey! What's wrong?" Billy finally noticed the look she had on her own face. "Nothing. Well, something, but nothing I can deal with here. Let's go home." Before Billy could protest, Kathryn glanced around and Kowloon Park became Billy's lab. The woman flashed another wry smile at her engineer and hurried out the door.

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Chapter 43 Named after the 19th Century Berkeley University President (and ex-Confederate), LeConte Hall had housed the Physics Department on the Cal Berkeley campus for years, professional home for the likes of physicists Raymond Thayer Birge, Buford Price, and Young-Kee Kim. Room 375 echoed with freshman seminars such as "The Big Bang and the Early Universe". The third floor walls were still adorned with research posters, the air scented with Tea and Cookies. The Center for Particle Astrophysics was still housed in LeConte, though its outreach to the Longfellow Arts & Technology Middle School had withered away years ago. Not the fault of CfPA: Longfellow itself had been closed around 2012 for "lack of diversity." And if you listened carefully, really carefully, you could still hear, faintly, Don Orlando rendering an aria from his 111 lab, a ghost-song from decades earlier. On Saturday night the LeConte Building stood vacant of professors, post-docs, grad assistants, and students. Automation ran the experimentation that never seemed to end, but seeing as how it was Labor Day weekend, humans, mostly those who would become Mentors, had left to enjoy themselves as best they could, given the circumstances of impending social unrest, political upheaval, nuclear disaster, not to mention imminent Lunacide. On Saturday night LeConte Hall stood proudly. By Sunday morning it was a pile of rubble. __________________________ Al Hinterland couldn't believe his eyes when he tuned in the Sunday newsprograms and found every one on the Berkeley campus, cameras trained on the remains of some building. At first he thought that another rocket had failed, but quickly remembered that the next test was not for a few days. Besides, he quickly deduced that this test was 'live', meaning with a warhead. Surely the whole East Bay would be a cinder had that gone wrong. His phones were beeping wildly, and the email light was continuously lit. He needed to get a handle on what happened first, before talking to anyone, so he turned up the volume and listened intently, not only for content but also for delivery. Were people outraged? Complacent? The news people would echo the sentiment, and this is what was important, not facts. The reporters on scene were interviewing campus officials and local denizens. From what Al gathered, some militant group was claiming responsibility for the destruction of this building and was threatening to bomb facilities at Stanford and other elite universities. The Cal officials

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were understandably aghast at the carnage, the waste, but the reaction from the rest of the crowd was quite different. Far from any kind of public outcry, the locals expressed satisfaction and were in sympathy with the bombers, saying things like "Never did trust what those people were doing in there," "Proper folks don't think about stuff like that. There are things we weren't meant to know," and "It was an evil place, and I'm glad to see it gone." This whole anti-scientist movement he and his nephew had concocted was succeeding beyond his wildest imagination. They could blow up fucking buildings and register crowd approval! This act of rejection of all things intellectual, and the subsequent tacit approval by the masses, had given them carte blanche in courses of action. He and his people could bend any law, ignore any social convention, violate any code of decency they wanted to in pursuit of office. "Who the hell did this?" he swore at the screen, but the answer was not forthcoming. He decided to answer his private phone, the one outside the teleco network's billing system. Sure enough, it was Ernie. "Uncle Al! Are you seeing this?" "Shit yeah! Amazing! Do you know who did this? I'd like to kiss them! I had no idea that we'd touched so deep a nerve." Ernie glanced down at another screen. "My sources say it's a bunch of back-to-nature socialists called the People's Luddite Liberation Front. Never heard of 'em, but I'm told that they are connected 'spiritually' to the radical environmentalists of the last century." "Well, whatever. They did what I never would have done. The backlash if traced to me would have been political death. Speaking of which, anyone die in the blast?" "Just some foreign students. Their parents will never get any significant screen time in this country. Not to worry." Al responded, "All the same, we should send condolences, maybe make a statement blaming dangerous research or something." He sat back and exhaled loudly. "Shit. First, you and your boss turn one explosion into a rallying point, and now another explosion solidifies our support. I think I set my sights too low this year. I should have been running for Governor!" "Give it a couple of years, and we'll back you all the way," said Ernie, confident that his credibility and power in the Doltman organization would be sufficient to fulfill his promise. Al asked, "Lad, can you get me about 100 protestors by Wednesday? No wait, how about 100 here, 100 up in Berkeley, and maybe Pasadena too? If I spread the word that there will be mass rallies at various elitist institutions, maybe these People's Luddites will get ideas and blow more stuff up. The more chaos the better, almost like back in '92 when we rigged the Rodney King trial. I need this because my own people have

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traced that Jamie woman and her friend to a clandestine laboratory near Cal Berkeley. She probably has some more cronies there as well. And there is a hint that somehow she's gotten into our secret accounts. The bitch! Don't ask me how, because there's no paper or fresh digital trail to follow, just a series of suspicious coincidences. Difficult to prosecute in normal times, but we can change that." "Now, if people are near rioting, if buildings are exploding, I can arrest her on even the slimmest pretense, citing some marshal law circumstance. And I'll be able to grab her pointy-headed scientist friends, hold them up as examples of the perversion allowed by a hands-off government. Boy, I can rip them to shreds! I can even blame all the civil unrest on them, cite them as a subversive influence on society. People love getting away with destruction by putting the blame for their actions on someone's 'provocation'. "Oh, society made me do it". One of the best excuses my predecessors ever came up with." "I can do better than that Uncle," beamed Ernie. "I can get most of the security personnel to go on strike next week. Most major university security services were forced to hire union workers; Congressman Doltman is owed big-time by them. I can arranged a sick-out on any day you want, in 'sympathy' for the lost union workers at San Gregorio." "Outstanding! Out-fucking-standing! Boy, we've got work to do, fast! Keep in the closest touch these next few days, so we can coordinate efforts. It may be 2033, but the Millennium is upon us!"

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Chapter 44 The destruction of the LeConte Building did little to assuage the anger of the People's Luddite Liberation Front. On the contrary, their success emboldened them, and their protests attracted many more followers across the country. Rumors ran wild of destruction of facilities at MIT, of attacks on scientists at JPL, even the encirclement of the Annealia Sargent Memorial Space Research Center in the Owens Valley by a caravan of Winnebagos, its occupants armed with a six-pack and a shotgun. Security had been tightened wherever it could, but the security guards were all members of a Republicratically controlled union, and would do little to protect property or even the lives of the new 'enemy of the people'. Dr. Vong was worried, not so much for her life as for the projects that held out the only real hope of survival for both branches of the bifurcating human race. If the hastily scrawled crude threats against the Lawrence Berkeley Labs were acted upon, her friend Jamie and the MIVI team would be dead in the water. No new ZPE generator could be brought on-line before Doltman's Hammer was to be launched. That there was another test of the ill-conceived missile defense in a couple of days heaped urgency upon crisis. ________________________________ They say that 87 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature of anger. Below that threshold people can cool themselves adequately; any warmer and it's just too hot to move. But at that particular level of thermal energy, anger surfaces. Anger at the world, anger at the job, anger at the kids, anger at the spouse, anger without even a cause. Here in early August a muggy airmass had settled over all of Northern California. Temperatures in the interior valleys exceeded body temperature daily, and due to the humidity, didn't relent much by night. Right at the coast the Pacific mitigated the heat only a little, and the Bay area felt more like Puerto Villarta that Puerto de San Francisco. Down at Vandenburg the launch crews for the next test of Doltman's Hammer had been praying for moderate weather: these old missiles were finicky about heat and moisture. The facilities had grown old and cranky from disuse in the decades since ICBMs ceased to be a threat to world populations, and technicians ran around constantly fixing the cooling equipment and drying any exposed wiring. Had they been engineers rather than technicians, they would have seen the danger in launching an aging rocket, even un-armed, under these conditions, but level of training required for an engineering degree had become prohibitive for most people, no matter how much the bar was lowered. Unions had fought this "discrimination" tooth and nail, and had recently lobbied successfully to

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allow holders of a two-year certificate to maintain certain government technology, antique missiles included. Such was the confidence that these technicians had in Doltman's Hammer and the righteousness of their cause, that warning lights were routinely ignored, and safety measures were regularly circumvented. The warhead would be detonated in space, regardless of the dangers. The launch would take place today! The test launch was not on the minds of the crowd assembling on Cyclotron Blvd, stewing in the stifling, humid air. Doltman's troops turned out in force, sweating profusely in the late-summer heat wave, growing more annoyed as the sun climbed higher and higher. Their numbers attracted bystanders, erstwhile students, and street people, eager to lash out at whatever demon du jour the protest organizers had produced. "Today's featured Enemy of the Common Man is ." Today in Berkeley, California, the target of opportunity was the laboratory of one Dr. Vong, location supplied by one Al Hinterland. Ernie had been true to his word: striking security workers joined the gathering mob for the march on LBL, a fact not lost on the People's Luddite Liberation Front. To them, the sheepdog had left the flock to fend for itself, and, not satisfied with the ambient high temperatures, they were preparing a little brimstone chaser for the mob's anger binge. To put the proper sympathetic face on the "demonstration", and to pay off a debt, Ginny Cesar had been flown in by Hinterland to stir up the troops. Ginny had missed the riot at CalTech, and was owed her five minutes in the limelight. She spoke about the unfair treatment the elitist faculty had given her, denying her the right to hire based on her own impeccable standards, firing her for innocently editing applications, consigning her to a less powerful position, (albeit at a higher wage-unmentioned in her speech). Ginny spat the names of those "damn scientists", at CalTech and here at Berkeley, who said they were doing research but who were probably practicing some kind of obscene rituals in defiance of the laws of nature, as seen in so many TV dramas of late. "Pornographic", "sacrilegious" she called their work, work that would "threaten our children" if allowed to continue. Ginny tried to stretch her five minutes of notoriety, but the 87 degrees did its job, and the mob started to abandon her and march up Cyclotron Blvd. Unbeknownst to the marchers, the PLLF had already arrived at Dr. Vong's building and were lighting the fuse. ____________________________________ All was in readiness for this most important powering-up of the Mobius Space equipment. The last run had given the team the confidence to push for "critical folding" as Jamie called it, not to mention the urgency forced upon them by dangerous circumstances beyond their control. If

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everything worked right, Kathryn should be able to fold these events back on themselves, reassigning them as circumstances under their control. Then, the next test would determine if they could stitch the patchwork of the Greater World into one fabric. All of them were now at Billy's lab. Sareena hadn't needed to adjust her last upgrade of drivers, and Billy's MIVI interface seemed to be operating at 105%. The two of them poured over the controls, mostly with Billy directing the girl in procedures while on the phone with Dr. Vong, adjusting the ZPE power flow. Jamie stood off to the side, silently observing her crew, not wanting to tell them that Hinterland's accountants had found her tap into their larcenous slush fund. They had found the tap and plugged it, leaving her with reserves adequate for a week, no more. But it was only a matter of days now before they found this lab and replayed their Burbank farce on a grander scale. Things had to happen, and real soon. Kathryn and James embraced and kissed a long kiss before she plugged in. As she went through her checklist, the conflict within her made it difficult to concentrate on the crucial procedures to initiate folding. She had not expressed her suspicions about the unintended feedback that may have impacted Jamie so deeply, and the guilt was growing, festering, infecting her mind. It melded with the turmoil about her relationship that already sapped at her concentration. She had completed the primary interface and was... I do love James, but something's not right. I just don't feel complete. She shook herself mentally and tried to focus. The pressure! Billy said just before she hooked in that the military rocket was almost ready to launch; they all feared the consequences. Jamie had been unsure in the last few months, ever since she came back from Hong Kong. She'd bounced back just recently, but...What had happened? Did my feedback screw things up that bad? If we blow it it'll be all my fault. James... ______________________________ The humidity at Vandenburg was unusual, given that it wasn't fog. Moisture condensed on the fuel tanks, dripping into the motors and leaking onto the electronics that controlled the thrust vectoring. "Aw, the heat of the engines'll burn that stuff off in a second" was the pronouncement of the lead launch engineer. It was time to kick some stellar ass! "Countdown from 60, starting....NOW!" The 20th Century automation that hadn't been upgraded for decades churned away on it launch check program, faithfully sending commands to all the onboard computers. The flatscreens displayed a 'go' in almost every corner. Certain indicators were yellow, warning that some systems were in an unknown state: the warhead safeties, for instance. Also, moisture sensors in the

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motor assembly flashed red, but these annoyances were over-ridden by the humans in attendance. Quickly, the chronographs ticked off the last ten seconds, echoed dramatically by Ernie Martirez himself. He had flown in the previous night to attend the launch, representing the namesake of Doltman's Hammer. His boss was on the line as he intoned, "Three, Two, One, Launch!" One of the union leaders, a major Doltman contributor, ceremoniously pressed a big red button installed for him to press. The primary computer actually did the deed, and the missile package leapt from the pad and headed due west (wisely, to avoid a repeat of the previous fiasco) to the cheers of all in attendance. The primary computer could not cheer along with the humans, but neither could it show concern for the immanent failure of two of the three rockets. _______________________________ Kathryn forced herself to return to her task. She wouldn't be the weak link in this chain. She had never done anything important, anything that mattered. Oh, she had been self-sufficient, mostly, except when she was with Leon. And she had been a good actress, one with great potential. That was why she was here, according to Jamie. "See? Billy is a great musician, but also a brilliant engineer. You can be both," she had told her. Kathryn tried to believe that, both for herself and since it was vitally important that she became a great "pilot". But then, this whole Mobius project was just a catalyst, Jamie said. I miss that below-the-skin closeness I had with her when we hitched. Why don't I feel that closeness with James? Shouldn't I feel that way? If Jamie was right, and they broke through into the Greater World, would we connect as closely as I need? Would he change his mind? Could she change his mind? James... ________________________________________ The energy density of gasoline made it difficult to replace as a fuel. The distribution system had been in place for over a century, and neither batteries nor hydrogen fuel cells had supplanted its dominance in the personal transportation field. And at 43 megajoules per liter, it could make a hell of a bang if detonated properly. The People's Luddite Liberation Front had gotten hold of an old military study (surreptitiously dropped in their laps by a Doltman minion) that showed a small amount of gasoline could make superior bomb if it was misted into a space and then ignited. The PLLF members decided to make their statement in this fashion, spraying a fine mist of high octane via compressed air paint sprayer locked open in the foyer of some Lawrence Berkeley National Lab building. Which one didn't really matter, and since

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they were out to destroy technology, they chose (arbitrarily they thought: a word in the right ear had influenced their decision) the building that housed Dr. Vong's equipment. That she might be injured or killed didn't weigh too heavily on their minds. What they didn't want to do was hurt their supporters, who were just coming into sight. The Luddites had to hurry! Storming into the foyer like an evil tornado, masked and reeking of gasoline, the PLLF troops scared the holy crap out of the support workers manning the front desk. They scattered out side doors and windows, some stopping long enough to yell desperate warnings to the occupants of nearby offices. Most left without further urging. Most, except for Dr. Vong, who was locked away in isolation, feeding ZPE to Billy's equipment when the bombers detonated the gasoline mist with a flare gun. ________________________________________ "Kathryn, keep it real," she heard Billy say with a trace of irony. Don't stress me anymore! But she knew he was just gently prompting. Can't you see I'm conflicted here? No, I guess you can't. Trouble with being a good actress, you can hide any emotion. James never had much emotion to hide. Why doesn't he... She ran through the last of the procedures, and felt her environment begin to change. At first it was as it should be: virtual spaces, window-dressing, all much more vivid than the familiar NetSpace but expected. She went though the progressive exercises she'd been practicing since she'd been forcibly weaned from the Thumb. On the schedule was real-time manipulation of the structures of space itself, to alter the various parameters of normality that are maintained by computer in NetSpace. Today she would make an actual alteration to the Real World; even something small would be a huge success. The heat was on, and it wasn't just the muggy air she and James had walked in coming over to the lab. I wish he were in here with me. I feel so comfortable here that maybe I could make him see. _________________________________ The old but venerable flight control equipment had warned of the possibility of systems failures, warnings that were dismissed by the staff, so anxious were they to get the test underway. Now, not yet ten minutes into the launch, the thrust vectoring computers for one of the boosters had malfunctioned, locking the exhaust vents off at a slight angle. This attracted the attention of one of the technicians. "Sam, this line's not following the other one," she said, pointing to the screen traces of the missile's projected and actual path. "What'll I do?"

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"Hmmm" mumbled the corpulent Director of Technical Operations. "Seems to be going to the right. Try turning left." The young technician twisted a small joystick on her console, and, thankfully, the tripack of missile started to come around. But without first diagnosing why the rockets' track had veered off, the fix complicated the problem. Now there were two opposing forces on the package, two motors working against the third, putting an enormous strain on the bindings that held them together, and setting up murderous vibrations. Rocket 3's thruster vents were the least robust of the trio, and quickly failed. Onboard computers shut the propellant off and awaited abort instructions, which never came. "Sir, it's wandering again." "Shit. Where is it going now?" "Looks like pretty much straight up." "How high is it?" She peered at the screen. "It says 38 k-m." "Well, how high is that?" "Don't ask me, I don't know what a k-m is. But it seems to be slowing down." "Why is that?" The corpulent Director pulled out a paper towel from his pocket and started to mop his face, despite the air-conditioning. "Don't know. But this light is red--it says 'Unit 3 fuel flow'." "Maybe it's run out of gas." While the humans pondered, the now unbalanced propulsion tipped the rockets over before attaining orbital insertion, directing them eastward but now about ten degrees of latitude greater. The torsional stresses produced by the uneven thrust created shear stresses on the weakened bindings that began to cut into the skin of the two functioning rockets, right over the fuel tanks. Moments later hydrazine vented angrily into the stratosphere. "Sir, the fuel gauges are flashing yellow. I don't think we can control it anymore, once the engines shut off." "Where is it headed?" "Down, back towards the coast." "Where?!" "I can't tell yet." "Well, aim it straight down, before it runs out of gas. At least it will crash into the ocean with no fuel left to explode." Forgotten by the crew was the fact that the warhead arming system was designed to activate when its delivery vehicle's engines ceased. _________________________________ Suddenly all the window-dressing people stopped their preprogrammed activities and turned to star at her. Their faces blurred, for a

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moment, all had the mathematician's smile, his soft eyes, his low chuckle. Then just as quickly they resumed their routines. Gees! Did I imagine that? She looked around carefully--all was according to the log sheet. Kathryn shivered, then tried to change the color of one of the houses on this artificial street. Again the population stopped, changed, smiled, but this time they dissolved in place. Something must be wrong with the gear. She tried to contact Billy but couldn't make the connection. Dismay, then panic, then... Then things started to change. Radically, contradictorily. Hot but cold, bright but dark, confined yet open. This was different than all the trial runs she had experienced, and nothing like the hitching she did. Nothing like NetSpace, ever. Complete sensory overload. James! The thought of him and his nearness calmed her. Fear, a tangible color that had formed in the space before her, was supplanted by wonder, manifested as beautiful music. Sights, sounds, and smells were morphing around her like some grand hallucination. Kathryn held up her hand and watched it change from fin to flipper to paw to hand. Could the others see this? _________________________________________ The PLLF had not the means nor the education to calculate the explosive power of a room full of misted gasoline. Therefore, the blast was unexpectedly violent, taking out the entire front wall of the structure, leaving it looking like the exposed side of a doll house. Not since the Oklahoma City van-bomb had such devastation been visited on a public building. They perpetrators cheered as they picked themselves up after the shockwave, and the approaching demonstrators stopped as one, a mixture of horror and amazement on their faces. Inside the lab, Dr. Vong was thrown to the floor. Relay racks full of processors and generators tipped against each other; only the fact that her building was seriously reinforced for earthquakes saved her from having the whole lab cave in around her. However, the damage was done. Power flickered once, twice, while the UPS backups kicked in. They could only sustain the system long enough for a smooth shutdown, about five minutes. She started shutdown and opened the door, making plans to escape whatever had just happened. But when she saw the flames rolling down the hall towards her, Dr. Vong had to rethink that whole escape thing. _________________________________________ Kathryn turned to look at her colleagues. They were frozen blurs, much like time lapse photographs of headlights on the freeway. Is this right? Have I screwed the pooch?

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Something was building up inside her, and at the same time breaking down. She became the Asian woman she had been in Kowloon Park, then snapped back to herself as a little girl, not blonde but with Sareena's long dark hair. She looked back at the blur that was James and saw on him a frozen stare of wonder. So he can see this! Kathryn continued to watch her man, for hours that were seconds, and saw him finally as he was. No projection of her fantasies, no canvas for her imagery, no stage for her screenplay. What have I done? What's going wrong... he will never be a father. Realization! A hammer cocked... ______________________________________ "Oh shit, oh shit!" The launch crews' collective face had gone ashen. Ernie Martirez, who had been standing aside from the consoles talking up his union boss, caught wind of the horror coursing through the technicians. "What's going on?" he demanded. "Sir, the rocket has had some trouble," said the young technician. Her Director had just fainted and was a huge sweaty lump on the control room floor. "First it went off to the right, then up. Then it headed back towards us, sort of, but I tried to crash it into the ocean. But now my screen says it's headed towards..." Failure to understand the Physics of the propulsion and trajectory had produced disastrous consequences. The last course correction before it vented all its hydrazine had caused the missile pack to spiral wildly. And to compound matters, strong upper level winds were pushing it back towards the continent, canceling any effect the correction might have had. "...the Golden Gate, as far as I can tell. Maybe just off the coast, maybe in the bay, but..." "How long?" Ernie whispered. "Minutes. That's all this screen can tell me." Minutes. Christ! Ernie thought. Think man, think! What do I tell Doltman? The Director of Technical Operations had been revived with a whiff of smelling salts administered by another technician, heretofore silent. He needed direction from the Director, fast. "Sir?" he said panicky to the groggy fat man, "My screen monitors the warhead. All along it's been green, and I didn't touch anything, I swear! But now all these lights have gone red. I think that's bad." "SHIT! Shut it off, whatever it is. Shut the fucking thing off!" yelled the Director, wincing, holding his left shoulder, panting dangerously.

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"I don't know how. Which button is it? I wasn't trained for this. I was just supposed to watch things." Ernie overheard. "Idiot! Read the damned labels! There must be an off switch." "Most of them say on and off, but all the other words are confusing." To the Director Ernie spit, "Does this mean that the fucking bomb will explode?" "I, I, aaaa..." The fat man started to respond, but fainted again, this time dead away. The strain had been too much for his already overworked heart. Remember a TV show he had once seen, Ernie proceeded to beat with his fist on the dying man's chest, thinking only Who the hell can we blame this on? ____________________________________ Concentrate, don't screw this up! Concen... his destiny is elsewhere and elsewhen. A trigger squeezed... I... but I love him...we need to part ways. She knew it finally, all illusions gone. Such sadness she felt! Emotion overcame her; a charge ignited. ______________________________ The good Doctor never figured that some external disaster would be the cause of her death. She had always accepted that her research was dangerous, considering the energies she regularly played with. If something violent was to take her, she thought it would be a by-product of her work. But what was this inferno? What could have exploded elsewhere in the building? Resigned, she sealed the door as best she could against the flames. Maybe the fire department would arrive before the oxygen is used up. She could hear the distant crashes of collapsing floors and walls in other parts of the building. Before the oxygen is used up and the place falls on my head. Just then, the lights failed as the UPS completed shutdown. For a moment she was in darkness, with only the sound of atmosphere passing under the door toward the waiting flames. Then, to her greatest amazement, the ZPE generators suddenly rebooted. Power indicators zoomed off-scale. As the air thinned from the hungry fires outside, Dr. Vong watched the trunk lines flash spectra from the far infrared to ultraviolet and back again. Astounded, choking, she saw her equipment melt, no dissolve, giving off no heat. Astonishing!

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Stunned and nearly suffocated, on the floor seeking the last lungful of oxygen, she wondered as her lab sang with a thousand songs, is this what it is like to die? ______________________________ Her mind dilated, and a new world was born. That which had been growing inside Kathryn suddenly blossomed, like some enormous sunflower. She removed her physical connections to the MIVI interface and her world ex/imploded. Now unencumbered by the restrictions of instrumentality, Kathryn found her degrees of freedom in time and space expanding with every thought. Doors of perception opened, moments crystallized like ships emerging from a fog, firelight filled her, its radiance breaking through from inside to out all around her, tiny rotating beige squares, triangles and other Euclidean shapes flitted around the light like moths. Impossible music roared in her mind, becoming a tapestry, becoming a space to live in. She thought, I've not screwed up! This is success; we've done it! She knew it was finally the end of all their elaborate plans, and the beginning of a greater reality. I have done my part; I have a life to live; time to leave. She turned first to James, mainly because of the connection between them, now frayed to the breaking point. She was inside his head, speaking to him with the voice she used in their bed. Love, I must go. My feelings for you have been like the tide; once it flowed, now it ebbs, and like the tides my feelings for you will persist. But this whole experience has enriched me, and it has also changed me more than Jamie ever let on. I can see my way more clearly now, where I came from and to where I'm going. Call it destiny, but it is what it is. Until this moment I've lived a small life, a meek life, an unimportant life. No carpe diem for me. That's all changed now. I have needs. Ah, James... You know, I once had a dream where I saw a little boy with your face, and I thought he was ours. It made me very happy, it made me feel complete. I realize now that you are that little boy. He is you. You are still a child, many years younger than your age. A good thing for you, a natural thing, but it's not for me. I need that child, and you are too young to be the father. I will not be whole if I am childless. I hope you understand; I must go. And he felt her sadness engulf him. The earth seemed to tremble beneath him, his mental footing gave way, he held his head in his hands and tried to reconcile the wonder of the events around him with the pain of immanent separation. Then the rest joined with her. Sareena had watched Kathryn morphing before, and to her the final change had been to Kathryn as her mother, now dissolving, engulfed in an amber glow. Go do what you must

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do, what you can do, to find happiness. We will always be here, safe thanks to you, and you can come home anytime you like. Sareena finally realized the consequences of this evolution into the Greater World, felt the divergence between Kathryn and her own beloved tutor--funny how I think of things in a mathematical way--and the wheels began turning. Billy tore himself away from the equipment to watch Kathryn blur, focus, reblur, refocus. "What's happening to you?" he asked. "I don't know. It's sort of the 'eureka' you must feel Billy when you make something that works. It's extraordinary, really. I'm sad, I'm happy, and I see the paths and folds Jamie has talked about just as if they were MIVI projections. But they are real, they are real! I can walk this way or move that way. I feel connections between all of us, but I know we are still individuals. Your worries about some loss of identity? That won't be a problem. You're still you, I'm still me, but I'm more of me now than before. See?" Billy suddenly felt her all around him, like an ensemble of Kathryns. The most intense resonance he had ever felt while playing music paled in comparison. Time seemed to stand still, the air was electric-another man might have fallen hopelessly in love in that perfect moment. The bass player recognized it for what it was; thanks to his recent reeducation by James and Dr. Vong, his years of engineering experience, and most of all, his musical mind, he was attuned to the composition of the breakthrough Kathryn had initiated into the Greater World. Without the loss of self he understood the gestalt that Mentors had, that he now had, and he felt like an ancient fish stretching his newly evolved legs. Finally Kathryn turned to Jamie, and for the briefest moment she saw, not the young woman whom she had come to know as her best, closest friend, but an old man, an ancient man, Methuselah incarnate. And on that face of ages she saw a familiar face, buried in wrinkles, but intimately familiar. She gasped, shaken. Quickly however that face was gone and the Jamie she knew stood before her. After a moment, a year, Kathryn reached out and said, sobbing a little, "I understand now. Everything. I must go." Jamie touched the hand of the fading image; "I understand." She winked, "Write if you get work." Then, with a slight pop, Kathryn was gone. And the project that was a catalyst for the four of them became a catalyst for millions. A thought wave, passing through the mentors like a density wave moving through a galaxy, igniting stars. Around the world, the patchwork of isolated Greater World projects became linked, and things changed. The fire at Dr. Vong's lab never ignited... Doltman's Hammer never launched... And JMS 2032 vanished from the Real World.

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PART IV

Chapter 45 "So that's it?" asked Billy of the others, somewhat tenuously. James was still in shock; he sat staring at a monitor, not seeing or hearing. Sareena breathed, "Isn't that enough?" She looked at her teacher, sensed the tragedy he felt, and her heart went out to him even as her mind raced. "But I don't feel any different. I haven't got any super-powers or anything." Jamie laughed. "Did you think you would? Silly man!" But she had a look of relief on her face, as if she had doubts that this would ever happen. Then suddenly understanding spread across her face. "You know, I’ve know all about the mechanics of Mobius Space for a good while now, but it just occurred to me, almost a year after our first meeting, that it’s all sort of an inverse Schroedinger’s Cat." "How you mean?" asked Sareena, amazement starting to take hold but not looking away from the mathematician. Billy answered, “I see. Rather than the observer collapsing all probabilities, evolved humans actually create the probabilities in the first place!" "Right! And as long as these probabilities are self-consistent so that other Mentors can understand them, they become part of the Greater World. " "Well then, Miss Jamie, what the hell happened to Kathy?" "She did it, we did it, we succeeded: our probabilities are selfconsistent. We created an intersection of Mobius Manifolds, and Kathryn took it." "Did she go to save the Moon? Will she be back, ever?" asked Sareena, still looking at James. Jamie walked over and put her arm on both of them. "No to the first question. Like I've been saying all along, we were doing all this just for a catalyst, to get a reaction going with others to allow them to develop new technology for that problem. The physics to prevent the impact didn't exist before we and others broke through to the Greater World. But now it can. As for Kathryn, our new technology worked, permitting her to follow another life-path now, one that suits her. When she will return, I can't say." James shook slightly at this last word; Sareena put her hand on his, not knowing what to say. Billy was not unsympathetic, but he needed to know, so he asked quietly, "What do we do now?"

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Jamie turned and smiled her Cheshire Cat smile, a mixed grin of satisfaction, empathy, and devilment. "Essentially, anything we want." And behind her eyes you could see the teen-ager's wheels turning. _______________________________________________ On October 23, 2032, the IGNN finally broke the story, and it quickly spread to the various national, state or province, and local news outlets. In Los Angeles an attractive anchorwoman of appropriately indeterminate lineage reported, "More on that story about the city takeover of the MUNI and BART systems in a minute. We've just received this breaking news story. Scientists have succeeded in diverting asteroid JMS 2032A from its collision course with the Moon. For more on this important story we go to Earthman David Navarrro at the Annealia Sargent Memorial Space Research Center in the Owens Valley. David?" "Thank you Kimberly. As we've been reporting for the last few months, our satellite, formally known as Luna but which we call the Moon, has been in danger of receiving a mortal blow from asteroid JMS 2032A. Asteroids are large chucks of Solar System debris that orbit around the Sun in vast numbers. We've been concerned for almost 40 years about an Earth impact with one of these cosmic visitors, a potentially devastating catastrophe. But a hit on the Moon hadn't been contemplated until the discovery of JMS 2032A almost a year ago. The extent of the damage such an impact would have on the Moon was unclear, but it could have destroyed our satellite, with unknown effects on us. Certainly our tides would be affected, and songwriters would have one less metaphor to use, eh Kimberly?" "Since that discovery and realization that it would hit our Moon scientists have been searching for a way to nudge the asteroid onto a different path. Nuclear weapons were considered, but barely a week before these weapons were to be launched, scientists succeeded in using a Laser to push the rock to a safe location." "It's an amazing idea, but apparently light does have a pressure associated with it. It's too small for us to feel, but spread out over a large area it would produce enough force to push even a huge rock in space." "Scientists here have invented the ZPEXRL, an X-Ray Laser which uses something called Zero Point energy to power it. Until now the only way to fire an X-Ray Laser was to use atomic weapons, which make one huge burst of energy for the laser, subsequently destroyed in the process." "Zero point energy comes from, they tell me, quote, ‘the Heisenberg uncertainty of known the value of Electromagnetic fields as well as the rate of change of those fields simultaneously’, unquote. Folks, I don't know what that means any more than you do, but it worked. The

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ZPEXRL has been firing continuously for the last two months, and the most recent calculation on the path of 2032A has been altered enough to keep our Moon safe, this time. We can all rest easier tonight, knowing that Moonlight will still shine in our window for years to come. Back to you Kimberly." "Thank you David. I guess we'll be having romantic evenings under the Moon for a long time to come. In our other top story: automated car lanes open on the 91 freeway..." Around the Los Angeles newly evolved humans chuckled. The salvation of the human race barely topped the salvation of commuters. More to the point, the method of global salvation could not have possibly worked before the bifurcation of the species. No radiation pressure could have altered the trajectory of the asteroid so close to lunar impact. The reaction force of the X-ray photon emission alone would have buried the device deep in the ground. There was some truth to the Zero-Point energy report though. No matter. The disaster that would have been caused by Congressman Bruce Doltman's military solution was averted, and the fact that "mad scientists" turned out to be not so mad, had indeed saved the planet, took all the wind out of his and his Republicratic sails. Oh, at first there was an attempt to bury the story, which worked for several months and lessened the embarrassment for those advocates of "The Hammer", but eventually even the most distracted citizen thought "What ever happened to...?" and the word got out. Then a show was made by Doltman to recant and say that there had never been any real danger, but the hyper-passionate speech he had made earlier in the year was way too fresh, a wooden stake through the heart of resurgent statism that the Liberty Party could twist on demand. At least for a few years; cracks in its dominance were showing. True, the effects of dysgenesis would eventually bring back the Nanny state, since the citizenry would grow less and less capable of controlling themselves. True, after this brief flare-up of self-reliance, the world would drift towards dystopia. But critical mass for the Mentors had been achieved; no statists could ever hamper their activities. They would make sure everything ran smoothly for their cousins, that they all had everything they needed and nothing too dangerous for their politicians to play with, something no mere government could do. For now most people went back to ignoring all that "science stuff", leaving the thinking to those few who enjoyed thinking. For the EveryMan, the pursuit of happiness was enough. New knowledge and technologies sprang up almost at the speed of thought, making life more leisurely, more worry-free, and more secure than he could possibly imagine. For now there really was someone to (secretly) watch over him, a family of big brothers and sisters who could avert any catastrophe, cover

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any shortage, and solve any problem, save those that arose in the normal course of human emotion. Lovers still quarreled, babies still cried, and young girls still thrilled as the young boys fought over them. However, famine slowly vanished as populations stabilized, the air and water became cleaner, energy was plentiful, and war was no longer necessary or even desired--it interfered with that pursuit too much. Global Utopia? No, just the Real World, a nice place to bring your kids up in. As for those who now had access to the Greater World, at least four were busy dismantling their equipment, making individual plans, in wonder and in sadness. Up at Berkeley Jamie found the MIVI engineer alone, finishing up his notes. "Hey Jamie! Glad you're still around. I've got a question for you: what was that vested interest your told us about at that first meeting?" Billy asked. He was about to leave the lab at Berkeley, go back and rejoin that concert he had started so long ago. Strange to think that this was he himself who had taken over for him when "Nathan" had first opened that doorway to the Greater World. Now he was going back--not that he had too--but he hated loose ends as much as any engineer. He was worried about being out of practice though. "Beyond saving the Earth, that is." She laughed, "Good memory! Have you been agonizing over it all these months? Well, I have some explaining to do I guess. You see, most normal people see time as proceeding one foot after the other, an army of seconds marching in time, so to speak. This is a good first approximation, but upon closer study it's more like a dance, with leaps, twirls, and jette`s, folding back on itself, twisting around. I came here on one of those twists from after we had already accomplished this. You've talked to James about multiple consistent realities in Mobius manifold junctions. It's similar." "When I began to study the events surrounding the saving of the Moon and our planet, I realized that the technology could not have solved this problem at that, this time. But somehow the problem was solved. My circumstance in the Greater World is, and will be, a fact, so as I came to understand how we really survived my course of action was clear." "Now you can't call it fate. Fate and destiny are the results of an arithmetic sequence of events leading up to an inevitable conclusion. You will learn the fallacy of linear time soon enough; then all I've said will make sense. Think of it as, well, something that needed to get done to keep my world consistent. In a weird and not very accurate way, I am my own parent, not in a biological way, but my future existence depends on my past existence." Billy rolled his eyes. "Well, duh!"

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"No, no. I see what you're thinking, and I wasn't clear." She looked right into Billy's eyes. "Don't ever breathe a word of this! You know about a woman's scorn, right?" Billy nodded solemnly. It was probably the only thing he ever feared. "OK. My full name is Jamie Southard. James was named after his uncle." She let the words hang; Billy's eyes grew wide. "Yes, I see you understand," she said. "When I awoke to the Greater World, I was reborn. My rebirth was dependent on the events that transpired here. A few months ago I found that my presence here had altered the topology of this manifold. However, because the 'history' as I knew it to be didn't unfold as expected, as I studied had it, I had the freedom to change it. What would have happened to me if I hadn’t, I can't say. But I wanted this life, and more importantly humanity was in extreme danger, so I chose this course of action. It was touch-and-go for a while, and the outcome was by no means certain, but we succeeded. I hope you are as pleased as I." "Yeah" he said, mostly to himself. He sat there, taking his time sorting things out, closing out his notes. He had been considering the events of the past year as he was packing up, just how bizarre it had seemed at first, and how quickly he had adapted to the new reality. True, he didn't feel any different, and he couldn't think of any new "life path" to follow as Kathryn did, but he was happy to go with the flow. The revelation about Jamie did take him by surprise. After a few minutes of contemplation while Jamie helped him pack a few small items outside and onto his bike he asked, "So, are you outa here, I mean, really outa here, like Kathryn?" Jamie put her hand on Billy's shoulder and squeezed, "Yes, just about. I had a little talk with our prodigy programmer, and I want to say goodbye to James. He's totally bummed about Kathryn leaving like that. Maybe you could look in on him from time to time?" "Sure, he's just a big kid and always good for a grin. You gonna tell him who you are?" Jamie shook her head. "That's our secret. Remember the scorn routine! I could make life very dicey for you with Leigh and Amanda." Billy winced. "'But now it's time for me to go, the autumn moon lights my way'." He recognized the quote. "It was just a little over a year ago, wasn't it? What a year!" They embraced for a long minute. As they pulled apart Billy asked, "We'll meet again, won't we?" Wet-eyed, Jamie said, "Oh yea. When, I can't say, but definitely."

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Billy gunned the rotary, aimed the bike down the driveway and onto Ashby Ave., and with a wave was gone before Jamie could see him tear up.

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Chapter 46 James was sitting in his hotel suite, suitcase packed but open on the bed. He was slumped in a chair overlooking the bay, watching the boats zip by. Crowded, he thought. Nice day to be on the water. No worries, living for the weekend. By the erratic course many of the watercraft traced, he judged that some of the captains and crew were seriously self-medicated. He said aloud, "Could it be any other way?" "Do I detect a vein of bitterness?" Only mildly startled, James turned to see Jamie, arms folded under her breasts, almost hugging herself. She gazed at him for a moment, then looked past out the window. "You could have knocked," he said quietly. "I did, several times." "Oh." "So I popped in--didn't want you to be alone. Also, I came to say farewell." "You're leaving too?" She moved towards the window and continued to stare at the bay. "Yes, I've been away too long," she sighed, leaving space for the obvious question. "So, you've got someone waiting for you?" "Yes," she said simply, "although for her we were together only yesterday." He didn't even raise an eyebrow at this. "Must be nice." Again, "Do I detect a vein of bitterness?" James snorted, "A vein? Hell! You found the mother lode." He rose to stand next to her. "Some things don't change, even in such extraordinary times, huh?" "Did you expect them to?" "I don't know what I expected. Maybe that we'd, maybe that I, I'd found somebody who'd stick by me. Maybe that this push into the much vaunted Greater World would make the connection between and Kathryn more cerebral as well as physical." Jamie turned to face him. "In your own way, you're as unrealistic as Billy, who thought he'd get some special powers. No special powers, no immanent godhood and no special evolution for relationships. Men are still men, and women are still women, even if we're on the way to something more than homo sapiens." "Evidently so." Jamie pulled him to the sofa. "Look, regardless if a woman is EveryWoman or something more, a large part of our anatomy is geared for

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childbearing. And we're reminded every month 'that's another cycle that you didn't conceive'. Therefore, the urge to make a baby is central for most, but not all, women." She paused. "That's one reason that orgasms are so much more intense for us. Another carrot to follow, a reward for putting up with bleeding, cramps, and all that. For you, a small spasm is all that you get, because you don't have to deal with reproduction so intimately." "But unlike you, we have a limited time for reproduction. Now, I could have told Kathryn that this time limit isn't a problem for her, now that we've broken through..." "Why didn't you?" he almost shouted. "Because," she said quietly, "she felt the urge now, and my telling her this wouldn't have changed anything. She felt motherly now; it's not something you can turn on and off, something that you can subvert, something you can put off. She may be the planet's first MIVI pilot, but that's secondary for her now." "Well, I might have come around and given her that child." Jamie shook her head. "No, you wouldn't, not soon enough for her anyway. She could see that." She said sternly, "Let me clue you in, mister brilliant mathematician, on a bit of anthropology/biology/psychology. A woman needs to feel a measure of control in a relationship. We are generally not the physically dominant partner, and most men rebel at overt physical control anyway. So we need something else, another method. Why are some working women happy to have a man who doesn't work? It wrests a bit of control from the man." James considered that. "I don't want control, I want cooperation." "You're unusual, and that's a problem. Here's why. Most men have a barely restrained aggressiveness, more willing to bull through something physically that to think it out. From a survival-of-the-fittest point of view, this is very attractive to women, because we see men as a source of protection for themselves and our children. Even if some women have to weather some abuse--which I don't approve of in the least--they're reminded that they have a strong male present. Police and armies are predominantly aggressive-masculine for this reason. But there's still the control issue, like keeping big, mean dogs for protection." "So the control is?" "The carrot and the stick is sex. Supply an aggressive male with whatever sex he wants for good behavior, and give him a cold bed when he misbehaves. It's a fine game to play--withhold too much and he will look for another supplier. Especially aggressive men will stray anyway, regardless of the woman-at-home's temptations. But women are good at applying the spurs appropriately." James grunted, "Sounds very mercenary."

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"Well, sorry, but for many women it's necessary; it's their only bargaining chip. Most, not all, women, want that strong, dominant, even dangerous man. You are a nice man, a loyal man, an extremely smart man, but not very aggressive. I'm guessing that Kathryn sensed that you couldn't be controlled in this way. Besides that, offspring weren't part of your life plan, no matter how much you loved her. See?" James exhaled loudly. "Yeah, I guess so. But we had good sex, if I might say so myself," he muttered, somewhat embarrassed. "For Kathryn and women like her, 'good sex' isn't enough. Rude and wild sex, hot and steamy, even dangerous. She needs a man who will practically bust through a door to get at her; then she'll feel confident that she has some leverage. A man who is just sexually compliant is not hooked. My impression is that you prefer to have a stimulating conversation, discuss theories, advance speculations, then maybe have a little sex. Again, we're not all like this, but the great majority are. And even if we eventually decide against personal motherhood, the needs and the instincts of motherhood are ever present. Therefore, like most people, male and female, we act in their own self-interest." "Very astute," he muttered bitterly, still resisting the reality. He sat moping, not responding, forcing Jamie to grab his chin and turn his face towards hers. "She's gone! Let it be," she said sternly. This got his attention. "I must say, you don't seem particularly sympathetic." Jamie softened. "Dear boy, sometimes the truth is a bit hard, even in the Greater World. Let's just say I've looked at life from both sides now. But hard as it seems to believe right now, it's all for the best." James retorted, meekly, "So, do you have any children?", knowing her answer but wanting to defend himself somehow. "No. I was married once, a long time ago, but we never felt the need for any kids." "But you're about Kathryn's age. Don't you feel the 'urge'?" "My circumstances are, well, unique. So no, I have no such proclivity." James thought for a moment. "You know, when I think about our little group, none of us is a parent. Of course not Sareena, but also not Billy, nor you, nor me. Thinking about my old UVa colleagues, their reproduction rate is very low, negative actually. It's not just me. If we are all part of a new evolving race, how come we don't want children much? Seems like there'd be some kind of imperative, you know? I mean, it looks like we'd die out before we get very far." Jamie assumed her professorial cant. "There is no evolutionary advantage for a human to be able to understand Maxwell's equations. Or to write serial music. Or debate relativism versus absolutism. All a human

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needs to be is a bit smarter than his prey. Just a bit. 'Get there fustest with the mostest', and get out before something bigger comes along for a meal. Anything else in the brain department is superfluous. Art, math, science, philosophy, music--all these are tough to fit into survival skills for a homo sapien." "So...." James connected the dots. "So we're no longer homo sapiens?" "We're splitting off, but not--" she snapped her fingers "-instantly. It's not spontaneous generation, like the old creation biologists demanded. Our DNA sequencing is drifting away from human normal. How fast this will occur I cannot say, since we will have it within our power to influence the drift rate. But the bottom line is, we don't have as many children because we don't need as many. Lifespans will increase to many centuries, measured in linear time. Of course, in Mobius Space linear time has little relevance." Navell soaked this up while Jamie continued. "None of this mitigates the fact that Kathryn wants, needs to be a Mom. And you ain't 'Daddy'. Get used to it!" Then, almost whispering, "Get over it. Get over her." The two sat there on the sofa for almost an hour more, hardly saying anything else. Boats continued to zip on the bay; people in the hall laughed and talked loudly as they strolled by. The mathematician digested all that he had been told, and when he would shudder, holding back a sob, Jamie consoled him. He ran the last few months over and over in his mind, as he had been doing ever since Kathryn left. Why had he not seen what Jamie had told him? What could he have done to keep her? According to Jamie, nothing at all. After a while the wounds began to knit as he slowly came to realize that there was no blame in this situation. Just as well blame mass for gravity. There would be still be pain, but no guilt, at least for this-one more--failed relationship. However, he did begin to feel selfish about keeping Jamie here. She had been a comfort, but if it was true that she had been in a state of separation for over a year, it was wrong to hold her here overlong. "Yes, my boy, I need to go home. Things'll work out; just be patient." They stood up. "May I walk you to your car?" "Not necessary. I didn't arrive by one, and I won't be needing one now." She hugged James long and hard. A question, nagging him for months and months, finally surfaced. "Who are you, really?" Jamie stood in front of him, slowing fading from view, until only her smile remained. ______________________________________________

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History recorded that mere months before the asteroid was to destroy the Moon a group of scientists developed what was called a "photonic pressure beam" using a super-laser that changed the potential impactor's path just enough to miss hitting our satellite. This was a perfectly acceptable explanation for the world of EveryMan; scientists will take care of all the hard stuff. As long as there were 500 channels of mindless entertainment on TV, as long as the new automated lanes on the 91 freeway keep traffic flowing so they could chat on the phone, as long as there was a steady stream of new celebrities cueing up for their, formerly fifteen, now five, minutes of fame, as long as their pursuit of happiness isn't slowed by too much of that 'thinking' stuff, the family of man was content. Most people didn't realize that some of their siblings had just left home. Weeks went by, and time found James sitting, with Bugger snoozing in his lap, on the front porch back home. Another dusk, another Autumn. He could, with only a little effort, be sitting on any porch in any place at any time. The possibilities, the opportunities that existence in the Greater World offered still astounded, and honestly, frightened him a bit. So many doors now open to him... But he was comfortable here in the Real World on the Real Porch with the Real Cat. One day, sooner that later, he would move into the new realms available to him and the other Mentors. Not today though, not today. He still had the very real fantasy of that woman who would walk up the driveway and love him for his mind. It might happen, he thought bitterly, reflecting on his own recent fiasco from which he was still smarting. Yeah, right. Suddenly Bugger started, leaped up into the air, and hid under his rocker. An intense spot of light was forming, growing, flashing a broad spectrum of colors in the middle of his driveway. Deja vu all over again, but he had seen so much since the first time this had happened, James was not any more impressed by this than by any door opening. Probably Natalie AKA Jamie stopping by for a visit. This buoyed his mood, as he missed her and the other team members and thought of them often. That woman knows how to make an entrance, he thought. And as he looked up he saw a tall, exotic, shapely woman, darkly complected, with long straight dark hair. The same refugee from the Kama Sutra who had pulled him into Alice’s looking glass over a year ago. But it wasn't Natalie ne' Jamie who stepped out of the halo of light. She was indeed a tall, well-formed Indian woman with long dark hair, but that regal face, those piercing, intelligent, familiar eyes... Holy crap! he realized, it's Sareena! It's Sareena grown up!

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"Hello James," she cooed, almost chanted, in a rich, sultry, powerful soto voce, obviously enjoying his reaction. She was a stunning vision: perfect figure, huge bedroom eyes, wide smile, generous lips, lithe and poised. And no more the teenager with just an adolescent crush; her intentions were clear. "I've solved our SETI problem."

THE END

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