Thank you, Akimakel, Bow Echo, Creative Girl and Susan, for reading and reviewing. Exuberant thanks are winging your way!
44
Earlier, at the Kyoto, "Navy town" hospital, suite 117-
There would, of course, be hell to pay. No question at all about that. Not just once, but twice his inventions… his world-changing visions… had gone quite publicly wrong. That first time (involving the high-speed train) Tycho had been onsite, able to help Scott Tracy get matters sorted. This time, he was confined to a hospital bed, unable to see or hear, communicating solely through his haptic keyboard and cyberlink.
Thank Peace, Plenty and Progress for the WorldNet, through which he could still meet with his colleagues and design a solution. Using the global interface, Tycho was able to reach Hiram Hackenbacker, out on Tracy Island. Then, using IR's highly advanced computers, collaborating with his self-styled "biggest fan", Tycho prepared to take action.
Fine. He'd inadvertently opened a wormhole right there on Earth. One end lay in the depths of the ocean just over his original goal, Pacifica City. The other had somehow shifted from Kyoto, Japan, to one of Earth's deadliest toxic no-go zones: Manhattan, New York.
No-go, because of a very public disaster, in which a GDF salvage crew had awakened one of the conflict's most dreaded ancient weapons: a manhunter. International Rescue had eventually shut down and destroyed the thing… disposing of its highly illegal Artificial Intelligence in the process. But, the world government would not tolerate a repetition. They'd sealed the dead zone borders, retroactively re-teaching all students, media sites and public employees that such places didn't exist. Easy enough, when you controlled all the data.
Tycho's cyberverse avatar shook its silvery head at that, because covering one's eyes with both hands did not take away danger. If anything, it only made trouble more likely. No one paid him the big cred to make policy, though. That was for people like Chancellor Shaw and Colonel Casey.
At any rate, working with Doctor Hackenbacker (whose avatar was a blue-skinned, dark-haired young man with many arms, each one brandishing a different primitive weapon) Tycho got to work on how to shut off an unstable, wandering hole in reality.
They met up in one of Reeves' favourite cybernet sub-regions, the Think Tank. He had his own secure "room" there, with guaranteed privacy, plenty of bandwidth and an unlimited power supply. Expensive, yes. But, his patents and development skills brought in funds aplenty. More than enough to keep him logged in and working.
Hackenbacker had been invited and was soon admitted, along with Professor Moffat, his chief collaborator. (No special avatar; she'd chosen a basic, zero-cred icon, instead.)
"Doctor Reeves," said the Blue-skinned avatar, bowing slightly, "it remains a distinct pleasure to work with you."
Here, Tycho noted, the man had no stutter, but that musical accent of his was somehow more pronounced. Tycho's silvery paladin nodded, saying,
"It is good to see and work with you, as well, Doctors. I have had my meatware placed on drip-feed, so that we shall not be disturbed by needless minutae. The hospital staff will, I presume, keep me alive. If not, I have transferred sufficient neuronal energy to maintain conscious function, here in the cyberverse. Shall we commence?"
The blue man nodded, as did rent-a-face (who wasn't talking much, and showed a subtle, mid-section glow).
"indeed, Doctor Reeves. Now, as I see the problem…"
"Feature, Doctor. This is all simply an unexpected side-effect associated with matter transmission. Not a bug. Not a problem. Properly harnessed, this development opens up vistas, Gentlemen… erm, fellow citizens, I mean to say."
Dr. Moffat spoke for the first time, then, causing her plain, off the rack smile-face icon to grow in size and brightness.
"No doubt, Dr. Reeves. Harnessed wormholes are every thinking researcher's dream of instant, far-ranging transport. But, the fact remains that yours is now draining the Pacific Ocean onto a Western Territories' quarantine zone. I do believe that that could legitimately be termed a problem… Doctor."
Reeves' silvery amour developed a line of spikes.
"From a certain, short-sighted perspective, possibly so," he grumped, adding, "Shall we move on? The question at hand is how to shut down the actual link, while retaining utility, should we decide that instantaneous transport is required at some future date."
Hackenbacker's avatar brightened and swelled, as he both paced out a complex dance, and spoke up.
"No scientific feat is ever truly required, Doctor Reeves. Were the human race still crouched in their rock shelters, consuming scavenged raw flesh, we would still survive as part of a pattern, rather than swallowing up all the rest in our quest for dominance."
Dr. Moffat's icon flickered at that point, as though she were paying attention to something else, or in physical meat-space distress.
"Back to the point, you two… if Hiram and I have got your methodology straight, Doctor Reeves, you have reached down into the sub-fields underlying reality, to shift a few matrix numbers, thus creating a linkage between two distant sites. Am I, in essence, correct?"
"Basically," Tycho allowed, glad that somebody got it. "Although I was simply attempting to shift matter by altering its locational field points… not create a pair of linked portals. That… came as something of a surprise."
"I can imagine," said Brains, taking back over the conversation. "Now, as we are faced with an unstable, infelicitiously located set of holes, our purpose must be to close them. The question then becomes, how?"
Reeves' paladin sat down on his cyber-site's suddenly manifested furniture. The place was currently set to resemble an old English coffee house, complete with roaring fire and wet, hung-up tweeds. Very few patrons, however, and the walls were simple curtains of cascading data.
"Yes, well… have a seat, please… our options are to revise those numbers at the source: my transport disks…"
"Which would be difficult," said the smile-face icon, back in full force. "Considering that one has been partly destroyed, and the other now lies at the bottom of the sea."
"Granted, there have been challenges," Tycho admitted. "Plan B, as they say, is to make our adjustments in situ, whilst transiting the open wormhole."
Nobody spoke, for a moment. On the face of it, the prospect was dauntingly hard, if not impossible. Human voyagers experienced no time or consciousness at all, while traversing the portal. They would not be able to so much as sneeze, much less alter basic reality.
"Right, then," said Dr. Moffat, after a brief, pregnant pause. "What else have we got?"
"Perhaps 'who else' is the proper question, My Dear," said Hackenbacker, moving to stand nearer the faded and flickering smile face. "If one were willing to take a slight risk, the Mechanic might be persuaded to make the attempt. His cybernetic enhancements could give him precisely the edge that we need."
…and, of course, Kane was a former black-market customer. Reliable enough, when it came to business, and something of an ally, besides. Reeves' paladin cocked its helmeted head, saying,
"You trust him? You can make contact?"
The blue man nodded.
"I believe so, yes. With your permission, Doctor Reeves, I shall make the attempt."
His other possibility was the alien Survivor, who was away with Captain Rigby, seeking Scott. But no one commanded Survivor, or summoned him, either.
Knowing that Kane monitored all transmissions relating to himself, Brains first received Tycho's go-ahead, then broadcast a swift, coded inquiry. No doubt, Reeves had thought his private cyber-room entirely secure. And so it had always seemed, until the curtain of streaming symbols that served as his walls froze suddenly, then shattered like crystal, admitting a massive, lion-headed man in dark armor. Yellow-eyed and grim as some ancient beast god, the figure brushed past Reeves' countermeasures, and stepped warily into the room.
In physical person, the Mechanic was a large and intimidating machine-man. A tattooed and shaven cyborg. His cyber-self was still more alarming, for that aura of fear that he constantly broadcast went directly into one's mind. More than that, all of the room's data seemed drawn to him; causing its walls and furnishings to lean inward and then begin to unravel. Bit by bit, their substance trickled into Kane's avatar, feeding him power.
To his credit, Dr. Reeves did not cower before the Mechanic, any more than he had when faced with Havok and Fuse. Rather, he took a step forward, ignoring the constant stream of silvery pixels which were leaving his icon to enlarge a disguised and dangerous cyborg.
Kane scarcely glanced at him, or Dr. Moffat. Instead, that golden lion's head turned to regard the engineer.
"Tell me why I'm not going to just kill you… and these… in the next thirty seconds," he rumbled, pacing farther inside.
Such violence was impossible within the Net, they'd been assured. Rigid security measures prevented any such…
"I'm waiting, Horatio."
Horatio? A possible clue to the IR technician's true identity? Tycho filed the name away for future investigation, along with that avatar and musical accent. In the meantime, Dr. Hackenbacker's icon made placating motions with all of its many blue hands. Might have been more reassuring had he not been wielding swords, spears and maces while doing so.
"You will not kill us, because you are about to receive useful technology, Kane," the engineer told him, adding, "You are aware of the wormhole linking the Pacific Ocean and Manhattan dead-zone, I take it?"
The lion-head grunted assent, those hot golden eyes never leaving Brains' face. Didn't mean that he wasn't aware of the others, however. Reeves had cleared his throat to cut in, only to find himself not only frozen, but attacked in real time, as well. The machinery back in his hospital room all at once began to malfunction. At some level of reality, Tycho could sense his vital signs monitor going insane.
"It would be tough to miss," Kane admitted guardedly. "Your doing, or these?"
Brains produced a complex, many-shouldered shrug, saying,
"It was supposed to be simply a transport device. A matter transmitter. Unfortunately, interference from the Chaos Crew has led to a breakdown, which in turn opened the wormhole."
The lion snorted.
"Your problem, not mine. And, an attempt to sell that tech has most likely slaughtered your idiot Chaos Crew. Someone else already has those plans. You're wasting my time, Horatio."
The blue-skinned avatar shook its sleek head.
"There is a better version available... and we need your help, Kane. We mean to close the wormhole, but it must be done from within, by an individual with your rather remarkable skill set. In return for this aid, you shall receive transport schematics and monetary payment as well, if I may contact WorldGov to arrange transfer of funds."
The Mechanic's muscular avatar was covered in creeping and glowing tattoos. They seemed to vary in brightness as his mood and attention shifted. Just now, they were glowing quite strongly.
"Anything I want from the vermin World Council, I take, Horatio. Do you think that their toy security measures can stop me?" He had conjured a shot glass brimming with stimulant code, which streamed directly into his icon, along with everything else in that shrinking and fading node.
Not good. Doctor Reeves didn't like being left out of the conversation. Even by a notorious killer. Even when his cyberverse stronghold was being unraveled around him. Shaking free, momentarily, Tycho spoke up and said,
"Assuming that you find the Earth a congenial place to live and do business, Mechanic, it would surely behoove you to…"
One of the lion-head's ears flicked in his direction. Speaking to Brains, still, the cyborg said,
"Shut it up before I do, Horatio. As to the rest… your money means less than nothing to me. Anyhow, I've already been accused of killing the Chaos Crew, for plans I didn't take. No need to make those accusations more believable. But... scanning the vermin's data, I can see that you'll need a powerful algorithm to de-link those holes. Send it along once you've completed it. If the numbers look sound, I'll see what I can do. No promises."
…because he had no submarine, and no fast way to reach Manhattan, short of stealing a Thunderbird. Horatio didn't have to know that, though.
Trusting his ally, Hackenbacker smiled and then sketched a slight bow.
"Accepted, Kane. I will be in touch, once we have coded the slicer, and developed a strong enough power source."
"In return," rumbled the Mechanic, "I want ten grams of your nanostructure units, retaining full self-replication ability." With those, he could build anything. With the algorithm, there was nothing he couldn't destroy. From Kane's perspective, a real bargain.