CHAPTER 10 – Journey into Mystery

The first thing Kevin felt were his feet: they were wet. He and Bob had stepped out of the portal and right onto a beach, very close to shore. Before them were the limits of a vast and beautiful city, its buildings exquisitely angular and glowing with crystalline radiance. It was as if the structures themselves had been sculpted from diamond and placed over an intense light source to sparkle like a chandelier. The further away from shore, the higher the buildings rose, their rectangular faces casting pale rays into space. The city was built along the curve of a vast and tranquil bay, which had presumably been carved out by the warm, tranquil waters currently soaking through his boots.

"Ugh, spammit," Kevin said, lapsing into the vernacular of the cyberverse.

"What's wrong?" asked Bob.

"Wet feet," he replied. "Super uncomfortable. C'mon, let's get out of the water."

As they moved further ashore, Kevin noticed they were on a pebble beach, not a sandy one. Bending down, he picked up a rock and examined it. It was smooth, like a river rock, but it had the texture of crystal, not stone. The closest thing he could compare it to was dark volcanic glass. He picked up another rock, and noted that it was perfectly identical in size, shape, and texture. Looking around, and observing the uniformity of the shore, he decided that the entire beach was composed of copies of the same black ingot. Dropping one, he pocketed the other.

"Souvenir," he said, turning to Bob. Then Kevin froze, his expression bewildered.

"What?" Bob asked.

But then Bob himself was immediately taken aback. Something about him, about both of them, had changed upon entering the system.

"Kevin!" Bob said. "You've changed."

That wasn't entirely accurate. Bob had no trouble recognizing the Virtual Man, but his features had indeed changed.

No, Bob thought, not changed. Enhanced! That was the best word to describe what he was seeing. The image of Kevin that was being registered by Bob's brain had increased in resolution, and if he was interpreting the look on Kevin's face correctly, he was seeing him at a higher resolution, as well.

"Bob," Kevin uttered, "you look…almost human."

As if the same idea occurred to them both at the exact same time, Bob and Kevin turned their eyes down to gaze into the water. The reflective surface was almost a perfect mirror, and both Kevin and Bob crouched lower to get a better look at themselves. Kevin's reflection was much closer to what he saw in the mirror when he was outside, in the physical universe. In fact, he was hard pressed to find any difference at all, and although he was surprised to see his non-Virtual Man reflection peering back at him, at least the image was not completely alien. Bob, on the other hand, was seeing an almost completely different person in the water.

His skin was still blue and his hair was still silvery, but his features were much more finely rendered than they had been before crossing over into the Alpha-9 system. Kevin could see individual strands of hair where before they had blended into a single amorphous mass of silicone dreadlocks. Likewise, where his skin had been smooth and uniform, now there were laugh lines sketched on his face and a few horizontal creases on his forehead.

Kevin waved his hand over his face. "Bob, he said, "this is what I normally look like. When I'm not in the cyberverse, I mean."

Bob looked at Kevin with wide, almost panicked eyes. "It's amazing," he said. "There's so much detail. But is it permanent?"

Kevin shook his head. "I think it's just the environment," he replied. "We should return to normal once we return to the cyberverse."

Their mutual reverie was interrupted by a voice calling to them from the shore. "Gentlemen, if you'd please come ashore. I'm sure you'd be much more comfortable on dry land."

Their eyes fell upon a solitary figure standing at the water's edge. He was an older man with thinning white hair and tanned, leathery skin. His clothing skin consisted of a black frock coat, black dress pants and shoes, and a white shirt with a high, banded collar. Bob and Kevin climbed the rest of the way out of the water and stood before the old man.

"My name is Zuse Conrad," said the old man. "I'm the system administrator. I, of course, know you, Dr. Sawyer, and you as well, Guardian Bob. Welcome to Alpha-9."

Bob and Kevin exchanged befuddled looks.

"How do you already know who we are?" Bob asked.

"I'll be happy to explain everything," Zuse said, "but first a change in venue is required. Follow me, please. I have a car waiting."

With few options open to them, Bob and Kevin followed Zuse Conrad up a path that led away from the beach and to a piece of flat, open ground. Kevin was surprised to find himself walking on grass. Glowing grass.

He knelt down to run his hands through the soft, leafy blades. "This is grass," Kevin said. Except it couldn't be, he knew. For one thing, grass didn't glow.

"This way, if you please, gentlemen," beckoned Zuse.

He stood next to a vehicle with no wheels, so Kevin assumed it was a hovercraft of some kind. Unlike Bob's 262 convertible, this car was an enclosed luxury sedan with a curvy metallic body and darkened windows. The doors opened DeLorean style and inside was a roomy compartment for four passengers: two in the front, two in the back. Zuse climbed into what was traditionally the driver's seat in American-made cars, although there was no steering wheel or controls of any kind that Kevin could identify. Bob took the seat behind Zuse and Kevin rode shotgun. The doors closed automatically after they were seated and, almost immediately, the car rose up into the air.

"Were you actually expecting us?" Kevin asked.

"Indeed," Zuse replied. "You can't perceive it, but you've been here for quite some time."

"I have? I mean, we have?"

"Sometimes it's just you," Zuse replied. "Sometimes you have a companion, and it's almost always Bob."

"Maybe we should've brought Phong," Bob said. "He's good at riddles."

"I can only respond to your questions in a manner consistent with your level of comprehension, Guardian Bob," Zuse said.

"I think he just called me basic," Bob said.

"But very politely," remarked Kevin.

From above, the Alpha-9 system looked like an ordinary coastal city with a few notable exceptions. Above them, thunderclouds, dark and flickering, obscured the sky for as far as Kevin's eyes could see. Beyond the city were the gentle slopes of a mountain range, their peaks rising up to kiss oblivion and then disappearing into mist.

"Is this the whole system?" asked Kevin.

"Goodness, no," replied Zuse. "This sector is called The Bay. It's our residential area."

"A bay implies an ocean," Kevin said, "or a river. Which is it?"

"Alpha-9 sits on the coast of the Simulacra Sea," said Zuse, "a virtually inexhaustible source of liquid helium-3."

"Wait," Kevin said, "are you trying to tell me we were standing in a superfluid?"

"That is correct," Zuse said. "It's the basis of all our fabricated materials. We use it to make everything."

The vehicle turned toward the mountains, ascending into the clouds as it did so.

"Where are you taking us?" asked Bob.

"The Plateau," replied Zuse, "where the Principal Office is located."

All around them, bursts of light illuminated the gloomy, all-encompassing mists, only to reveal a greater accumulation of dreary vapor in all directions. It reminded Kevin of the time he had flown over a Nor'easter on a late night trans-Atlantic flight out of Boston. From his window looking down at the storm, he could see the lightning dancing within the clouds. It had been an awe-inspiring sight to behold then, but now that he was up close and personal with the forces of nature, he was terrified.

"Don't mind the Electron Cloud, Creator," Zuse said, as if sensing Kevin's apprehension. "It's completely harmless."

Kevin's head snapped around so fast, Bob thought it might spin off his neck.

Stuttering, Kevin asked, "You…you know…what I am?"

"Yes, of course," Zuse said, as if meeting his maker were no more remarkable than meeting a cousin at a family reunion. "You are Kevin Sawyer, the Creator of this system."

"You seem to know a lot," Bob said, "more than seems possible considering that we just met."

"I suppose it would seem that way to linear beings such as yourselves," Zuse said. "Let me put it to you this way: this is your first time meeting me, but it's not the first time that I've met the two of you. Ah, here we are!"

The clouds parted like curtains, and before them emerged a flat plane. Perched on the plateau was a prodigiously large pyramid of dark glass and steel. The sky beyond the clouds was a uniform teal green color, and dancing across the heavens, like flecks inside a snow globe, were specks of gold, their seemingly random motions etching gilded paths into the firmament.

The hovercar leveled off and made a wide turn towards the dark pyramid. As they approached, Kevin saw a section of the base slide upwards. Their vehicle slowed on its final approach and glided effortlessly into a brightly lit landing bay. The car gently touched down, and the doors sprang open.

"Here we are, gentlemen," Zuse said, climbing out. "This way, please."

Bob and Kevin followed obediently, trailing behind Zuse like a couple of children in a grocery store. Their guide came to a stop before an arch set into a wall. He tapped a series of keys on a keypad next to the arch, and suddenly the section of wall within the arch disappeared, revealing a room beyond.

"After you," Zuse beckoned.

Kevin passed through the archway first, followed by Bob and then Zuse. As soon as their host crossed the threshold, the empty space within the arch became solid wall again. They had entered an office—Kevin presumed it belonged to Zuse—with inwardly sloping walls of polished onyx. One section was made entirely out of plate glass. Beyond and below the glass was the roiling electron cloud that separated the sea and city below from the golden-glowing heavens above.

Zuse sat down behind a wide desk made from the same onyx material as the rest of the room. "Please, gentlemen, sit," he said. Two leather wing chairs and a mahogany table appeared at the administrator's suggestion. Kevin felt he should have been prepared for such feats of prestidigitation, but it was still startling to witness furniture spontaneously form out of thin air. Both he and Bob sat in the comfortable, high-backed chairs facing the enigmatic Zuse Conrad. "Now, to business," he said, leaning forward. "You wish to utilize the system to run an algorithm whose purpose is to yield the optimal waveform necessary to permanently disable every RAMM device in the multiverse. Am I correct?"

"Okay, timeout," Bob said, making a T-sign with his hands. "How do you already know all this? You act like we've been here before."

"Indeed," Zuse said. "Has the Creator not explained the nature of our system?"

Bob turned to Kevin and shrugged, as if an explanation should've been forthcoming.

"He said before that this was our first time meeting him, but it wasn't his first time meeting us," Kevin said. "This is a quantum system, which means the chain of cause and effect can be reversed. It means things can be in many different states and locations simultaneously." He looked at Zuse with a wild-eyed expression and pointed. "You're in a superposition."

Zuse smiled and nodded once. "The Creator is wise," he said reverently.

"What does that mean?" Bob asked.

"It means Zuse is conscious of everything that's happening in every universe in which he exists," Kevin said. "He's having this exact same conversation in a multitude of parallel realities. He's aware of all of them, and time isn't simultaneous across the multiverse. In some of those realities, we've already been here, so he already knows what we're going to say and do."

"I know what you're likely to say and do," clarified Zuse. "We're dealing with probabilities, after all."

"Then we can skip to the real question," Bob said. "Can you help us?"

Zuse spread his hands. "Maybe. We will certainly attempt to help you, but success is largely a matter of—how can I put this?—blind luck. And by 'luck' I mean the luck of being in the right universe. There is a 40% chance we will correctly compute the waveform, but there is also a 70% chance we will crash the system doing so."

"What are the odds of successfully computing the waveform without crashing the system?" asked Kevin.

"Less than 10% I'm afraid," Zuse replied.

"Is there any way we can improve those odds?" asked Bob.

"I'm afraid not," Zuse said. "We're limited by the functionality of the system, and there's no way to know if we inhabit one of the successful universes until after we make an attempt."

Kevin pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned on the arm of his chair. "Less than a 10% chance of being in the universe where everything goes just right," he said.

"Kevin," Bob said, "it's too risky. Even if we get what we need, you'll be stranded in cyberspace."

Kevin shook his head. "This has to be done," he said. "Mainframe's safety comes first."

"I agree," Bob said, "but there has to be another way."

Abruptly, Zuse rose up and crossed the office to the arch.

"Zuse, where are you going?" Bob asked.

"You and Dr. Sawyer are about to have a very emotional conversation, and it usually goes much more smoothly if I'm not here," Zuse explained.

"I'm not emotional," Kevin said.

"You have buried the hatchet with your dying father, Creator, and you feel as if there is nothing left for you to accomplish in your world," Zuse said. "I'd say you're quite emotional, but who am I to judge such things?" The wall within the archway dissolved, revealing another room, one different from the hangar bay, on the other side. "I will return shortly. Oh, and before I forget. Happy belated birthday."

Zuse stepped through the arch with a wave and the wall solidified behind him.

The room lapsed into silence. Kevin felt both embarrassed and struck dumb by Zuse's blunt diagnosis of his mental state, and he suspected the inscrutable sprite had spilled the beans on purpose in order to jump start the conversation he was supposed to have with Bob.

"Your father's dying?" Bob asked.

Kevin felt himself shrink into the leather chair. The last thing he wanted to talk about was his father.

"Is what Zuse said true?" Bob prodded.

Kevin answered, "It's complicated."

Bob crossed his arms and moved to sit on the edge of Zuse's desk, facing Kevin. "I don't think he's coming back until we've had this talk we supposed to have."

Kevin huffed a sigh of frustration. "Before coming back to Mainframe, I went to visit my parents for the first time in…years. We hadn't been on speaking terms because of what happened to my brother, Kyle. I never told you about my brother."

Bob shook his head and waited patiently.

"My family has a pretty long history of military service," Kevin began. "The last four generations have all served as fighter pilots, starting with my great-grandfather in World War II. Before that, there was at least one Sawyer directly related to me that fought in one war or another. I was the first to break with tradition. That caused a lot of tension between my father and me, but it was okay because he had Kyle, my older brother."

"He followed in your family's footsteps," Bob said.

Kevin nodded. "He was the legacy," he said. "Top of his class at the Air Force Academy, and he got a pilot's slot right after graduation." Kevin smiled, but it was a sad, remorseful expression that lacked the typical warmth Bob had come to associate with the human. "It was like he had a rocket strapped to his back," Kevin whispered.

"You sound like you really admired your brother," Bob said.

"I looked at Kyle the way Enzo looks at you," Kevin said. "He was my hero." Kevin turned his eyes downward, a faraway expression on his face.

"What happened?" Bob asked.

"I got accepted to Princeton when I was sixteen," he said. "That summer, I was packing my bags and getting ready to kiss my parents goodbye. A month before the fall semester starts, we get a visitor. One of Kyle's squadmates shows up in his dress blues all steel-faced and stiff as a board. We all know why he's there. Kyle was killed in a training accident. Total engine failure on his Raptor. He'd had his wings for less than a year. My brother…the one strapped to the rocket…just gone. What was left of his body wasn't fit for an open casket. I guess up until then, tragedy was something that happened to other people. It was a rude awakening." Kevin rubbed his forehead and steeled himself before continuing. "I stopped speaking to my father after that."

"Why?" Bob asked. "Because he encouraged your brother to follow the family tradition?"

"Exactly," said Kevin. "Don't judge me too harshly, Bob. I was a child. I knew it wasn't his fault up here." He tapped his index finger against his temple. "But down here…" He pointed at his chest. "…I needed to assign blame. There had to be a reason for the tragedy because if there was a reason then it could've been prevented. Maybe if Kyle had been more like me, maybe if he'd gone his own way instead of following the path my father had laid out for him, maybe he would've lived. And that's why I stopped speaking to my father for thirteen years."

Again, Kevin fell quiet, his face an expressionless stone mask. Bob could only imagine the storm of emotions brewing within him, but he kept encouraging the cybernaut to unburden himself. "What about your mom?" he asked.

"My mother was the wife of an American fighter pilot," he said. "She knew the risks that went with the job, and she bore the news just as stoically as my father did. I guess I confused their strength with a lack of emotion, and I began to resent them both; although, I think I resented her a little less than him. She's the one who called me. After I went home the last time. I was beat up and bruised, and she called me to wish me a happy birthday."

"That's how you found out about your dad," Bob reasoned.

"Cancer," Kevin said. "You don't know about it. It's a disease that affects humans. It can be pretty serious, or, in my father's case, terminal. My mother begged me to come see him, and I'm ashamed to say I almost refused."

"Why?" Bob asked.

"Because I had done everything to distance myself from my family," Kevin said. "I burned bridges, man. I never introduced them to Jessica. I'm not sure they would've known we even got married if she hadn't sent them a letter telling them. They only found out she'd died because of in-laws that they'd never met. How do you even start to fix something so broken?"

"You resented your parents that much?" Bob asked. It was an unbelievable thought for the Guardian.

"Only in the beginning," Kevin said. "After a few years, I just thought our relationship was unfixable, and so I didn't even try. I was wrong, though."

"You patched things up," said Bob.

Kevin's face contorted into an expression of anguish, and tears burned rivers down his flaming cheeks. "If I'd known how easy it was, I would've done it years ago. I keep thinking of all the time I squandered. Five minutes would've been more than enough."

"Does he know?" Bob asked. "About what you've been doing."

Kevin shook his head. "I didn't tell him everything, but I told him enough. I think he filled in the blanks. My old man's sharp, and I am his son."

"I'm sure he's proud of you," Bob said. "Any father would be. So if things between you and your family are better now, why are you so gung ho about potentially destroying the Alpha-9?"

Kevin looked up and met Bob's eyes. "I'm a soldier's son. I may not wear a uniform, but it's in my blood. It's how I was raised. That's why I'm going through with the plan. Because it's what a soldier would do. It's what my dad would do." He rose from his chair, keeping his eyes locked with Bob's. "It's what my brother would do."

"And the part about you having nothing left to accomplish?" Bob asked.

Kevin gave Bob a one-sided smile. "I learned how to cross time and space and discovered a parallel cyberverse. I built the most sophisticated computer in history, which we're now standing in. What more is there for a man to do? If protecting Mainframe and helping overthrow Megabyte is the next step, I'm up for it. And if it requires a sacrifice on my part, well, so be it."

Bob nodded. "Okay."

Kevin cocked an eyebrow. "As in: we're okay?"

"Yeah," Bob said. "If you're really willing to do this for us, I won't try and talk you out of it."

Like clockwork, Zuse reentered the room through the archway. "Are we ready, gentlemen?"

Kevin read Bob's face and saw that he would get no further resistance from the Guardian. "Let's do it," he said.