“What do you want?”
Winger filled in a few details, including personal matters he knew only Winger would know. Komar was skeptical, but he could see her doubts slowly melting away.
“Do I have to spell it out for you, Angelika? It’s called espionage. Or maybe reconnaissance is a better word. I’m inside the mother swarm. Inside the bosom of the Old Ones. And somehow, don’t ask me to explain how, I’ve been given access to information about what’s coming.”
Komar’s fingers were inching toward the alarm button again. Of course, Winger saw it. He detached part of his own swarm and UNSAC soon found her fingers wrapped up tight like a ghostly bandage, secured to the desk top. She squirmed a bit, but too much struggle was undignified and she sat back in disgust.
“You’re not pressing that alarm button. Not just yet. Not until you hear and see what I have to show you.”
“And what’s that?”
Now the Winger swarm spalled off a few trillion more bots from its arms and swirled them into a photon lens. The faint sparkling mist of the lens worked like a 3-d projector, hovering right over Komar’s desk. It downloaded files of more photons from Winger’s processor and beamed them at the desktop.
“You just lost two ships a few weeks ago trying to set up a shield. Believe me, the Bugs know all about that. The idea was okay but the execution sucked. You should have checked your cargo holds a little more closely.”
Komar grimaced. “I lost nearly a hundred good people on that mission. Herschel and Pegasus…my God, you didn’t actually—“
“It wasn’t me, Commissioner. In fact, I tried to warn your people…I’ve already paid a visit to Lamar Quint. He didn’t believe me either. Now watch—“
The photon lens began its projection. It was a display in miniaturized 3-d of the Caloris Basin complex. The base was still under construction…but Winger had been anointed chief expediter by the Shadow Man and he had the plans. Now, Komar stared in disbelief.
“The surface of Mercury. Commissioner, contact Farside. Tell them to train their instruments on the Caloris Basin. I’m talking Mercury…you know, the planet? You’ll find that the facility I’m showing you here is already building.”
Komar leaned forward, wincing against the firm grip the bots had on her left hand, curious and intrigued by the details of the projection. “These look like schematics. Plans. This is being built now?”
“As we speak. Check with Farside. I had access to these plans and I brought them here. UNIFORCE…Frontier Corps…somebody…needs to stop this base from being built. The Bugs are planning on using this base to oversee installation of a big ring that’ll surround the Sun, gather a boatload of the Sun’s energy. All that energy is collected, stored and converted at this base. The Bugs plan to use it to help them in their…er, mission.”
“And just what is that mission?”
Winger felt like he was explaining things to a five-year old. “To assimilate…us, everything, the works, the whole enchilada. The planets, all the moons, the Earth, for heaven’s sake. Put this base out of commission, or keep it from being built, and the Bugs have a problem…don’t you get it, Angelika? I swiped their bible…their ten commandments and now I’m turning it over to you.”
But the engineer in Komar wanted to know more about the facility. “What are all these domes and structures?”
A bit impatiently, Winger went over the details. “I’m not making this up. Here’s the command and operations center for the Sun Ring. These domes are for energy management. Here’s the excavator and processor…they use the energy to dig up regolith and shoot if off into space around the sun with this catapult…it’ll be manipulated by a gazillion bots into a collector ring around the Sun. Here are the rectenna fields for receiving and converting all that energy the Ring sends back. And this—“Winger indicated the quantum coupler array. “—this is how I got back to Earth.”
He explained how he and Doc had used the array to scan their swarm config and pattern and beam the data back to earth, whereupon the patterns self-assembled back into the Winger configuration. It was clear that Angelika Komar wasn’t buying any of it.
“So what do you want me to do?”
Winger wanted to throttle the woman but he desisted. “Act! Do something! I’m a spy and I’ve got the enemy’s plans. Remember your ancient history…I’m the Enigma machine and this is Hitler’s big scheme.”
“You have more?”
“Oh, I have lots more.” Now Winger pinched off a small subset of his own body swarm and orchestrated a small animation. The bots swirled and flickered until the visual had fully formed, hovering mid-air right over Komar’s desk. “I haven’t been idle. This is something called a sun ring. It’s intended to coordinate with the Caloris Basin facility…just watch—“
The visual flickered and eventually settled down into an image of the Sun, the solar disk throwing off prominences and loops of fire. As Komar watched, the Sun grew steadily dimmer. Soon, it was apparent that a faint spherical veil had grown around the sun, thickening and blotting out the glow of the Sun until at the end, the brightness of the Sun had dropped by half. It was like looking up at the Sun through a dense morning fog.
“Some kind of fog?” Komar asked.
“I made some notes…” Winger told her. “…from what I found out.” He let a portion of the bots forming the animation re-form into a few lines of text, the words forming next to the Sun as if some god were annotating the scene.
Komar squinted, then stood up to see better as she fixed her specs to read:
The purpose of the Sun Ring is two-fold: (a) to obstruct sunlight reaching the Earth and hasten the changes required by the Prime Key (especially Module 2 (Reconfiguration) and Module 3(Evolution)); and (b) to gather all available energy for Prime Key Module 4 (Integration) so as to enable final disassembly and absorption of all solar system bodies as feedstock into the mother swarm of the Old Ones.
The Sun Ring is called a ring but it’s really a sphere.
The Sun Ring is primarily constructed from materials (feedstock) excavated and processed on Mercury at the Caloris Basin facility, then catapulted by mass driver into position around the Sun. The Ring orbits the Sun at approximately the position of Mercury.
Physically, the Ring is intended to be an enormous spherical structure composed primarily of nanobots, with some unprocessed materials interspersed. The bots are linked like a mesh. Their purpose is to intercept photons of light from the Sun and convert this light into other forms of electromagnetic energy, which is then transmitted for storage to Caloris Basin. The operational concept is totally different from human solar / photovoltaic cells. The Ring is much more than a sphere of solar cells. The individual elements are robotic in nature, thus programmable, configurable, etc. The Sun Ring is the energy source for the mother swarm to complete the Prime Key, upon its arrival in our solar system. The final phase of the Prime Key is Integration. Re-evolved Earth life forms will be fully absorbed into the Mother Swarm. Once this process is done, the Earth and all planetary objects in the Solar System will be disassembled to provide feedstock for the Mother Swarm, to continue its advance across the galaxy. In other words, the Petri dish is destroyed and the lab/incubator shut down. The Imperative drives the Mother Swarm onward.
The main purpose of the Caloris Basin facility is to provide feedstock for the Sun Ring, control positioning, configuration, operations, and maintenance, and handle energy conversion and storage from the output of the Ring. Thus the Sun Ring and Caloris Basin base are mutually supporting facilities and critical to the Old Ones in preparing the solar system for its ultimate fate.
Even a little diminishing of sunlight reaching the Earth, which would occur in the earliest stages of constructing the Sun Ring, will have serious effects on Earth, obstructing much of the Sun’s energy from reaching Earth, accelerating the elimination of life forms on Earth, and ending or diminishing interference with the Keeper.
This interference is preventing the Keeper from directing and coordinating the seeding of Earth with the progenitors of new nanobotic life, in readiness for the arrival of the Central Entity in year 2155.
The animation began to dissolve and Komar sat back down, wondering if she had dreamed the whole thing. She watched for a few moments, as the last wisps of the animation dissolved, the bots drifting back to recombine with the swarm of the Winger angel.
“Okay, General, I’ll take your word for this. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you are some kind of strange version of John Winger. That I’m not imagining all this and it’s not the result of all those peppers I ate for dinner. You say you’re a spy inside the big bug cloud out there. You’ve got all this information. Now you want me to act on it. Do something.”
“Yes, exactly,” Winger implored. Jeez, what do I have to do…slap her across the mouth? “Form an expedition or something. Bombard this place on Mercury. Commissioner, I can’t stay here much longer…I’m under surveillance…I’m sure of it. I’ve shown you what’s coming. Now it’s up to you to get going.”
Komar gave that some thought. “Assuming I’m not insane, the logical next step would be to convene a staff meeting. The General Staff needs to know what you’ve shown me. You know how UNIFORCE works, General. We’d don’t pick our noses without a staff meeting.”
At that same moment, Winger felt a small chime in the back of his mind, an alarm sound. It was a pre-arranged signal from Doc III. It was bad news.
***Incoming, Johnny…watch what you say here…I’m detecting changes in the quantum signal to noise ratio…could be extra harmonics on the carrier wave***
Winger said simply, “Right. I will-“”
Komar looked confused. “What was that? I didn’t quite catch—“
“Commissioner, I’ve given you enough to get started. There’ll be more…I just can’t say when—“ Already, Johnny was letting his own config disperse. Right before Komar’s eyes, the apparition was dematerializing, thinning out.
“Wait…what are you doing…where are you--?”
But Winger figured he and Doc had tempted fate long enough. Any longer and the Shadow Man would find out what they were up to.
He dissolved his config and the form that had been ‘Johnny Winger’ to UNSAC was gone, now just a few scattered atoms. On propulsor, the master nanobot that was now Winger headed back to the server room down the hall, intending to penetrate Node 3371 and use the Net to make a few more stops.
He seeped into the room known as Server Bank Eight and slipped past the connectors and pins into the guts of the Node. It was like an on-ramp to a freeway. Packets whizzed past like freight trains of cotton balls.
But before he could jump in and ride the roller-coaster that was WorldNet, he felt a force tugging him in another direction. Instead of diving into the river of cotton balls, he was lifted over the packet stream. He was turned end for end, thinking this should be making me dizzy, then he found himself hurtling down an odd curving corridor at breakneck speed, a corridor not of cotton balls but of polygons and tetrahedrals and dodecahedrons. He had been here before and he knew, with a deep feeling of dread, where he was going.
He came to landing on his rump with a hard bounce. He didn’t have to open his eyes. The smell alone came to his nose and he knew where he was.
Back at the fishing camp at Ford’s Creek.
His father, Jamison Winger, was standing over top of him, arms crossed with that look…the look that meant that bad times were coming.
“I’m very disappointed in you, son. But I suppose you know that already.”
Indeed he did. Once, when his son was five, Jamison Winger had caught Johnny in the barn out back of the house that served as a workshop, just tinkering, messing up parts and drawings, plugging in the guts of old Bailey the drone into a socket and frying the bot’s processor to a crisp. Mr. Winger had been re-programming the drone and had been working on special capabilities, as he called them, making Bailey into a real hot rod.
Johnny had earned several days of punishment for that, including no Net, no friends, you only come out of your room for meals and bathroom or when I say so.
Now Jamison Winger had that same look…the squinting eyes, the mouth set just so, the hard face cold as a granite slab.
Winger hung his head. “Yes, sir.”
The card game was over. There was no one else around. No Hugh, no Jim or Shorty. Not even a Shadow Man.
“I had very high hopes for you, Johnny. You passed all the tests. You did well, really you did and we were so proud of you. But now—“ Mr. Winger just shook his head sadly. Johnny couldn’t bring himself to look up and be in the glare of those spotlight eyes once more…he’d never been able to endure that.
Winger knew perfectly well that the apparition before him wasn’t his father. It was a cloud of bugs done up to look like Jamison Winger. He didn’t know if it was the Shadow Man or the Central Entity or…really, it didn’t matter. The thing looked like his father, talked like his father. It pushed all the right buttons. And Winger reacted as if it were his father…almost like he was programmed. Provide this input—the stare, the tone of voice, the lifted eyebrows—and get that output: the lowered face, the mumbled answers, the sweaty palms.
“Haven’t we always tried to provide a good home for you, Johnny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And don’t you know how much your mother and I love you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why do you keep doing this? We’re very disappointed in you, Johnny. We always expected better of you.”
The whole conversation was like following a checklist of his worst memories…times he’d upset his father, made him mad, made him glare at his son with those eyes. Point number one…followed by point number two and don’t forget about point number three. That was when he’d followed some wicked sense of curiosity and poked around his Dad’s barn cum lab cum workshop, turning gizmos on and off, plugging stuff in and nearly setting the whole place on fire. It was a kid’s curiosity, for heaven’s sake. I’m your son…I’m part of you…what else do you expect?
Johnny Winger was forced to re-live each and every way he had disappointed his father, from the earliest times to…
And the end result: Johnny promised his Dad that he would never do any of these things again, never work against him again. He’d be a good boy, a dutiful son and always strive, in every way, to do just what his Dad wanted and expected him to do.
Only the faint voice of Doc III, whispering away in the back of his mind, grounded him in the fact that this was some kind of simulation. This wasn’t real at all.
***Don’t make the promise, Johnny…don’t do it…they’re in control of your head and your memories…they may have found us out, they may have infiltrated the file, corrupted…don’t do it, Johnny***
His father continued to talk, to bring up things that should never have been brought up, re-living disappointments almost as if he were following a script, which of course he was. Winger tried to filter all of it out and concentrate on what Doc III was telling him. That was real. That was the connection that must never be broken.
It was like having a battle with yourself. That was the hardest part. Somehow, he’d have to do what Liam and Dana and millions of others hadn’t been able to do. Win that battle and save the small kernel of his own identity, his own memories that Doc III had managed to squirrel away in a small file somewhere in his config manager, to live another day.
The Normal part of him was just a few bytes at the end of that file.
But it was the only human part left. And that was the part that had to survive. And now, Doc was saying that maybe, just maybe, that part was corrupted too.
He knew he was caught in a dilemma. He could allow UNISPACE to mount an expedition against Caloris Basin and hopefully interfere with, damage or even destroy the base and the Sun Ring, thus p
reventing the Prime Key from being completed. Or he could assist UNISPACE and UNIFORCE to defend Earth and incur even greater wrath from his ‘father.’ He knew this wasn’t Jamison Winger. This was the Shadow Man manipulating his memories like a puppet-master, jerking his feelings this way and that, for purposes he could only dimly perceive.
He just couldn’t seem to stand up to the emotional roller-coaster they were putting him through. When you were an angel, a para-human swarm entity with a master processor, whoever programmed the processor was in charge. You did what the code said do. Even if the processor contained a small non-descript file called Configuration Buffer Status Check that tried to alter the code, block the code from being executed, the master processor seemed to have ways around the blockage, alternate routes to execute the code.
Johnny Winger knew he had to make a decision—and soon—whichever way he went. Either way, it was going to be a painful decision.
Chapter 15
Solnet/Omnivision Video Post
@dana.polansky.solnetworldview
November 15, 2155
2300 hours U.T.
SOLNET Special Report:
“Last Minute Deal with the Devil?”
Solnet Special Report correspondent Dana Polansky reports from UNIFORCE Headquarters on rumors that an official negotiating team has been formed to seek terms and accommodation with the Entity operating the vast cloud that is even today moving further and deeper into our solar system…
“Good evening from UNIFORCE Headquarters in Paris. The QG is located in the fifth arrondisement of this great city, just off the Boulevard St. Michel. As you can see, as we pan up, it’s a rather unique structure, in fact one of the tallest in the City of Light…seventy-five stories in all, with a flower-petal design at the apex and a twist in its vertical columns. The engineers tell me that the ‘twist’ is there to help stabilize the building against winds and earthquakes…makes it extremely strong and resistant to stresses like this, so they tell me.
“In just a few minutes, we’re going to have an interview with Ms. Angelika Komar, the Security Affairs Commissioner. Generally known by the acronym UNSAC, Commissioner Komar is responsible for running all UNIFORCE operations. We’ll be asking her some questions about these rumors of a negotiating team…just follow me inside….”