Chapter 17
Xan barely survived. When the giant approximated his location and fired the hydraulshock, the backsplash of debris crushed his body. Eight compound fractures splintered through his skin and an artery ruptured. He almost bled out on the way to the transport. When they got him to the vehicle, a soldier reached into the open wound and found the artery. It had retreated deep inside his thigh. They clamped it off and he was in and out of consciousness the rest of the trip. He felt the truck bouncing onto a dirt road. He heard the plane on takeoff.
He woke up in the infirmary at his base with tubes snaked up every hole. Doctors and nurses worked and spoke in the room, but Xan was confused, he couldn’t hear them. Finally a doctor noticed he was awake and wrote on a notepad: “Your eardrums are ruptured.”
Xan tried to speak but he chewed on his breathing tube. The doctors discussed in silence and then pulled it out.
“I’m deaf?” Xan said too loud. The doctor nodded yes. “Where’s the boy?”
Minutes later, Xan’s head scientist on the project came into the room.
“We have the boy under the same drug cocktail the Americans used,” Dr. Kim said. “We understand the dosages and frequency. The boy is in a lucid coma.”
All of this was dictated on a screen for Xan. His deafness was frustrating, but he didn’t have time to feel self-pity.
“We found a command log built into the boy’s mind,” Dr. Kim said. “It was implanted there as a checklist, a ‘to do’ list. We’re going through that now to understand all that he’s done, and more importantly, what he’s capable of doing. He’s told us some, but he’s confused. He asks for his father.”
“He’s conscious?” Xan asked.
“He can be communicated with, yes,” Dr. Kim replied, his words quickly appearing on the screen.
“Can I speak to him?”
“We don’t know if that’s safe. He’s contained in a construct that he thinks is real,” Dr. Kim replied. “He has no idea what he’s done. He just thinks he’s sick.”
“You cannot command him to do complex tasks right now, correct?” Xan replied.
Dr. Kim nodded.
“If we can’t use him like they did, what’s the point?” Xan said. “I’ll go in. This is my project, you have my contingency instructions as approved by our President.”
An armored caravan took Xan to the secretly built Colossal Core. Xan began the build after his first contact with Harold Renki. It had taken over two years and while there was still more to be done, the Data Core functioned properly. Even then, Xan had seen what lay ahead. He had pictured rows upon rows of Chinese Sleepers around the massive Core protecting their online infrastructure. They were the soldiers of the new world.
The temporary Core Xan had used with the Forced Autistic was built in a hangar. This was built properly underground. It was deep in Beijing, intentionally among the hundreds of millions of people, buried underneath the innocent so that any retaliation would be weighed and measured. The U.S. would not go to war. If the situation were reversed, neither would China. They would compromise. The threat of the King Sleeper’s immense power would drive the world sane. Xan didn’t want war. He wanted a reset button so the world would have a future.
Xan saw the Colossal Core alive for the first time when the elevator down revealed its glowing, pulsing brilliance. For a moment he felt no pain, the silence was a gift, as he basked in the glow of China’s salvation. He was wheeled over to the boy. Justin was mounted into the crucifix, with the metal shield covering his face and the large blue fiber optic tubes coursing data directly into his brain.
To the right of the boy was the massive Data Core. It stretched to the ceiling. Behind the crucifix and the boy was the Data Crusher, where the boy was fed the relevant raw data from the Core and where the boy could manipulate that data in return. The Data Crusher was a massive hard drive that spun at fifty thousand rotations per minute. It was an engineering feat more impressive because the hard drive plates were ten feet in diameter. The whole system weighed eight tons. Two tons consisted of a concrete base designed to keep the Crusher from rocking itself off the foundation like an unbalanced washing machine.
Data was laid on the plates and manipulated real time, only to be pulled off a thousandth of a microsecond later and fed back into the fiber optic core. The process was transparent to anyone in the world.
When they wheeled Xan to the boy, he felt the powerful thrum of the Data Crusher. They raised his chair and put the Mindlink on him.
“Are you ready sir?” Dr. Kim asked. There was no monitor, but Xan knew what he said.
“Do it,” Xan replied. He felt the pull of the Mindlink and then the room around him disappeared.
= = =
Xan floated in black.
“Dad?” a boy asked. By his voice, he was nearby.
“No, I’m not your dad,” Xan said. In cyberspace he could hear. He didn’t realize how much he already missed it.
“Who are you?”
“They call me Xan.”
“Is that your name?”
“No. My birth name is Caro Shin.”
“Why do you go by Xan?”
“Shin is Korean and I live in China. Status is important here. Xan was the name I used since I was a boy. Why is it so dark?”
“I don’t know.” The boy was scared. “It went black some time ago. Are you a doctor?”
“I’m a scientist,” Xan said.
“I’m still in my coma?”
“Dr. Kim can you hear me?” Xan asked.
“Yes, we’re here,” Dr. Kim replied out of the ether.
“Build a construct; make it pleasant,” Xan said.
The sun broke on the horizon and rose quickly over distant hills, each one covered in luscious green. A river glistened ahead of Xan, the flowing water and serene surroundings an ideal of the real thing. The boy was to his right, twenty feet away.
“Your name is Justin, isn’t it?” Xan asked. The boy nodded, uncertain.
“I’ll leave if you want me to, but we need to talk,” Xan said. “Would you walk with me to the river? Have you ever seen one?”
Xan walked toward the river. He could hear the rustle of the trees, the chirping of birds, the pleasant white noise of the water flowing away. The boy kept his distance as they walked to the river front.
Xan sat down, cross-legged. He found a smooth stone and chucked it into the river to hear it splash. He let out a long sigh.
The boy stood.
“I wouldn’t trust me either. I wouldn’t trust anyone, anymore,” Xan said. “How long have you been here?”
“Two days. The doctor and my dad said I was close to being healthy, that my brain was responding to the treatment.” The boy’s face crumbled. “It’s not true is it? Are you going to tell me I’m not getting better?”
“Worse. But I need you to listen and be tough. Can you do that?” Xan asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you remember when you first got online and flew to the moon? You don’t know it, but what you did wasn’t supposed to happen. The program was specifically restricted from doing that. YOU made that happen. You re-programmed the program.”
“I just flew.”
“Your conscious mind, yes. But not your subconscious. Do you know what your subconscious is?”
The boy nodded.
“For whatever reason, Justin, it allows you to do amazing things online. You are the only person to ever hack into a MindCorp Data Core. It was considered impossible. Teams of Sleepers have tried and the general consensus was that the Cores were unhackable. You shook down a Colossal Core in two minutes. And the military noticed and they found you. You are the most powerful Sleeper in the world.”
“I hit my head riding an ATV,” Justin said. Xan shook his head sympathetically.
“No, you didn’t. That memory was put in your head just like this river. Justin. You have been unconscious for over six months in a medically induced coma. And you’ve been
used by the United States as a weapon.”
“I don’t understand,” Justin said. His right hand slapped against his thigh. Xan had read about this nervous tic.
“You don’t have to right now. I’m a high up official for the Chinese military. We took you from a military base in the U.S. because they had you manipulating our economy and other nasty things. Evil things.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Justin said again. He was a genius, but he was twelve and he felt like everything in his head was a lie.
“I’m going to bring you out of this medically induced state. You are going to wake up in a military base with a bunch of people that look like me. Are you ready for that?”
“How do I know it’s real?” Justin asked. He looked lost.
“Take a rock near you and cut yourself, and then decide it should heal,” Xan said. Justin looked at him reluctantly. Finally he took a rock and scrapped it across his forearm. A line of blood budded on his skin.
“Think it healed,” Xan said and Justin did. The small cut vanished.
“When you wake up and do that trick, think all you want, but that won’t happen.” Xan stood up.
“Why are you helping me?” Justin asked.
“Because I can’t make you do the things I want you to do,” Xan said. “You need to know the truth and then you can decide. You are a weapon, Justin, a unique and masterful work of God and your life will never be normal. Either by your choice, or by force, your fate in this world has already been sealed. I know it’s a heavy thing to hear, you’re a boy, but it is what it is.”
“You’re leaving?” Justin said.
“Yes. You’ll see me very soon. The real me.” Xan glanced at the sky. “Adjust the construct for real time.”
“Yes, sir,” the ether said.
“It will take ten hours to pull you out completely; the drugs are heavy sedatives with unique properties,” Xan said. “The time you feel now will be real. When this all starts to get blurry, just close your eyes and try to sleep.”
“Xan, are you a good guy?” Justin asked.
“You’re smart, Justin. I read that. China would think so. The U.S. would want me dead. I have hurt people for what I see as the greater good,” Xan said. “Is that a good enough answer?”
“I guess so.”
“Take this time to process what I told you,” Xan said and then he disappeared.
= = =
Xan woke up to silence. Dr. Kim was visibly angry and pulled a monitor over to Xan’s bedside.
“You destroyed the false construct! We could have used that,” Dr. Kim wrote.
Xan gestured with his good arm for Dr. Kim to come closer. When he did, Xan grabbed him with surprising strength and almost pulled him onto the bed. Xan’s eyes always looked the same.
“The construct was broken. This is the only way to get the boy’s trust. Never scream at me. Understand?”
Dr. Kim bowed repeatedly in subservience. Xan released him. His instincts told him he had done the right thing. The boy’s government had murdered his parents, taken him against his will, and used him under the auspice of a gross, inhumane lie. Children are children because they lack reason. They are children because they cannot control their emotions—anger the worst of all. Xan would only have to tell the boy the truth. No lies, no coercion, just hook up the Goliath and let him avenge his family against a David that had run out of stones.
Xan closed his eyes and pictured the slow rolling river, and tried to feel its calm.
= = =
The sedative the U.S. had used and China had replicated was a predictable drug and it was ten hours on the nose when the boy opened his eyes and awoke to the world. When he started to fidget, Xan had him disconnected and moved to his quarters. The boy opened his eyes and saw the man he had spoken to by the river.
“Hi, Xan,” Justin said. He rubbed his eyes.
“I’m deaf, Justin,” Xan replied.
Justin looked at him surprised and then he saw a screen on Xan’s wheelchair. On it was “Hi, Xan.”
“It takes what you say and puts it on the screen,” Xan said.
“Cool.”
“When you’re ready, I’ll show you rest of the base. We can even get a breath of fresh air. There’s a lot I have to tell you.”
Justin blinked his eyes a few times extra wide and looked down at his forearm. No cut.
“You can try it if you want, but this is real. I don’t choose to be deaf with no leg and a gimp arm,” Xan said. For emphasis, with his good arm he picked up the other and let it flop back to his lap.
“Where are my parents?” Justin asked. It was inevitable.
“Rest a little bit, get your bearings and when you’re ready I’ll tell you everything.” Xan left the room.
Two hours later he and Xan were being pushed through the throng of Beijing’s crowds. A discrete perimeter of soldiers kept a cushion of space around them. Earlier, Justin had tried to stand up but his legs were too weak and he almost toppled over.
“I want to walk,” Justin said when Xan came in to check on him. He had found Justin on the floor.
“Then walk.” Xan waited patiently as Justin struggled, but he finally stood up. His legs shook like a newborn colt’s.
Justin grimaced. “It hurts.”
“Yes,” Xan said. “It’s the atrophy. You’re young. You’ll recover quickly.”
The city was alive. They wheeled through a busy market that hadn’t changed in two hundred years. Justin stared at the skinned ducks hanging by their feet and the poor caged crickets in full witness of their brethren skewered on sticks and smoking over a fire.
“This is China?” Justin said.
“Yes.”
Justin slapped his face, trying to wake up. He had withdrawn into the wheelchair.
“That won’t help,” Xan said. He turned his wheelchair toward him. “Do you believe this is real?”
Justin knew it was real. Online his body felt light, his mind as open as the sky. In the real world, a fat man sat on his chest and everything was loud and distracting and scary. The marketplace was his nightmare. Around him swarms of people went about their lives, bartering, selling, laughing, yelling. They glanced warily at Xan and his plainclothes soldiers. Justin saw mothers usher children in the opposite direction. The smells that filled the air were pleasant and foreign. He nodded.
“I will only tell you the truth. I have told lies before, but that won’t get me what I want,” Xan said. “But the truth hurts.”
“My parents,” Justin said. It was clear. They would never let someone take him. Tears spilled out.
“Your parents are dead. I don’t know the details, but it was the U.S. military, so the only comforting thing I can offer is that it was quick.”
“The blonde man. The long haired blonde man.” Justin rocked back and forth, hugging himself. He looked up at Xan. “A man came to our door from the military, he spoke with my dad. He spoke to me and I told him about the plane ride to the moon.”
“I don’t know, Justin. I don’t have that answer,” Xan replied.
“His name was Mike Glass. That was his name.” Justin heaved and gasped, the analytical side of his brain overcome by his emotions.
Xan remained quiet. The bustle of the market continued uninterrupted by this revelation.
“That is the hardest thing I have to tell you, Justin. When you’re ready, I’ll tell you the rest.”
Back at the base Xan told Justin how the U.S. had used him while under the false construct of a coma. How the King Sleeper had influenced nations and persuaded policy changes favorable to the United States. How he was manipulated to hack into unsuspecting minds and even kill. Xan pulled no punches and the boy grew to trust Xan quickly. He had eyes that Justin took to be kind, not knowing that they never changed.
A week later the boy went online of his own free will. After tests, he built his own construct, a place in cyberspace where he was comfortable. It was his farm. He built his parents a
nd they were exact in their likeness. In a distant field he even had a combine moving row-to-row, knowing that Margarito and Fernando were at the wheel.
Xan visited the farm and met his parents.
“This is your home?” Xan said to Justin.
“Yep. It’s not fancy but I liked it,” Justin said. His parents walked by him and his eyes saddened. But he liked what he had done. It was better than a funeral or a tombstone. It was a living memorial, a constant reminder of what he had lost, but also of what he once had had.
“It’s beautiful, Justin. As peaceful as the river,” Xan said. They both watched his parents go into the house. “I will ask you to do things and show you the way. I’ll explain why. And you can decide. Deal?”
“I don’t want to kill anyone,” Justin said. His lip trembled. He understood that he had that power, but murder wasn’t in him.
“I’ll never ask that, Justin. I’m not looking to end the world. I just want to bring it back into balance.”
“What first?” Justin rose a foot off the ground. He closed his eyes and the air shimmered around him as the fabric of time began to tear.
“I want you to map out the U.S. banking system and their credit unions.”
“That sounds boring,” Justin replied.
“Finance is a nation’s blood, Justin.”
The air around Justin rippled. Outside the construct in cyberspace, his mindscape unfurled like the top of a parachute. It was a green fog infinitely growing.
“You should probably step back.”
Xan did one better and disappeared back to the real. He had the first of multiple surgeries scheduled for this afternoon. He looked at his limp arm. Amputation. He raised his right arm and inspected his hand. He opened and closed it. He pressed it against the cold rail of his wheelchair. He pressed his palm against the sharp edge of a table. Never again. The Shin battle chassis had passed its final prototyping. The military was manufacturing one per day and they were ramping up more factories. The entire government had gone off-line. They were receiving psychiatric evaluations to determine what affect the King Sleeper had had on them. And they were furious. They had been raped and they wanted war.
“You don’t have to do this,” a female voice said. He couldn’t hear her, but he saw the words fill the screen. Xan had told the scientists on the battle chassis project how he wanted to proceed.
“So they send you to convince me otherwise,” he said. He turned to an attractive woman in her thirties. “How’s your morning?”
Xinting was a top scientist at the Colossal Core. He had recruited her when she was sixteen. In another reality, Xan thought, they could have been more than just colleagues. Her knowledge was commandeered to develop the implant for the Shin battle chassis.
“We have plenty of soldiers that willfully volunteered.”
“Are you worried for me?” Xan teased. He knew she saw him as an elder, but he couldn’t help it.
“Yes,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’re too important to be the test subject. You found the King Sleeper, you created all of this and without you we wouldn’t have had a chance. We need you.”
Xan changed the subject. “How is he doing, in your opinion?”
Justin had grown attached to Xinting. When Xan saw this bond, he encouraged it. The boy needed a sanctuary. A person he could confide in that wasn’t in a uniform or white coat. She joked with him. She played with him. Justin loved puzzles. HUGE puzzles. They even had a game where the pieces of three would be mixed together. He solved them quickly. The boy cried in her arms when he talked about his mom and dad. One night, under heavy guard, Xan let Justin go to the home Xinting shared with her parents. This freedom had made Justin more amenable. Dr. Kim, who had fiercely disagreed when Xan had removed the construct, apologized daily.
“He doesn’t have Asperger’s,” Xinting said. “In the U.S. file he was diagnosed with it, but he only has the symptoms. His brain is just different.” She went back to the old subject. “You are risking your life, Xan. We don’t know everything yet.”
“I’ve always heard that Chinese women are subservient, but I’ve never met one,” Xan mused. “If I can ask our young soldiers to give up their able bodies for China, then I can give up my lame one and lead them. It’s fitting, Xinting, don’t you see? I’ve always been in the shadows and after this I can never hide again. There are too many shadow men. Too many puppeteers. It’s time we turn on the light and watch the cockroaches scatter. Including me. We need an honest world.”
“Will this give us one?”
“As long as the overpowering influence doesn’t subvert its own intentions. This is the closest we will ever be.”
= = =
Xan’s surgeries would take weeks to complete. He had provided Xinting a list. She showed it to Justin before he linked in.
He looked it over. “No one will get hurt?” he asked. There were over two hundred tasks. His right hand tapped his thigh.
“Xan has respected your wishes,” she said. “He wants your gift to cause our countries to unite. It may not seem so, but his plan is for peace. We need each other, Justin. We need to be united in this new world.”
“Will you come with me to the farm?” he asked. She recognized that he was about to cry.
She knelt down eye-to-eye. “What is it?”
“My parents don’t have anything more to say.” His lip trembled. “They sound like me.”
Xinting’s heart broke. She hugged him.
“Of course, Justin. Of course. I’m honored to.”
She ordered technicians to install a Sleeper chair next to the crucifix.
At the farm, she met his parents. She pet his dogs. She waved to Fernando and Margarito as they passed by in giant red combines. Dr. Lindo had adjusted the construct so that time stood still as the days spun into months. Justin did the opposite. An hour in cyberspace was one minute in the real world.
“I don’t belong out there,” Justin explained. “This is where I’m me.”
“You’re beautiful in either place.”
Justin smiled.
In his front yard, Justin rose into the air. The Colossal Core thumped with his power. He began:
–Mirror Data Node 2 in New York and Data Node 1 in Chicago. Hijack Cores. Hack respective stock exchanges. Back up stock prices. Replace all stocks with randomly generated share prices.–
They laughed at dinner. His was a big belly laugh. They ate spaghetti and meatballs.
–Shut down all electric grids to U.S. military bases around the world.–
He showed her how to shoot his rifle.
–Disconnect all communication systems for U.S. military bases around the world.–
They walked through the fields. Justin told her about things he learned from his dad. She spoke about her childhood friends.
–Disconnect U.S. military radar surveillance on the Eastern Seaboard. Hack ballistic missile silos and disconnect all overriding protocols. Target Washington, D.C. Initiate test launch sequence.–
Xinting cried discussing her inability to bear a child.
–Hack into credit unions. Back up credit records. Erase all credit records.–
Xinting noticed that Justin’s parents weren’t around any longer.
–Hack the Washington, D.C. power grid. Shut down all power to government buildings.–
Winter came. Overnight Justin created a huge hill with a ski lift. They went sledding the entire day.
–Crash Data Node 12 in Washington, D.C.–
He was teary eyed all-day and combative. When she finally got him to speak, he told her he was horrible to his mom when she was alive and “I can’t take it back.”
–Crash Data Node 3 in Los Angeles.–
She had told Justin a few weeks before that she had never celebrated Christmas. Christmas morning, she walked down to a beautifully decorated tree. The dogs sat in front of it, wagging their tails. Underneath it were a pile of gifts. Justin was making breakfast.
“B
ut I don’t have anything for you!” she said.
“You’re my gift,” he said and hugged her.
–Hack into CIA and copy files of all current covert operatives. Contact operatives and tell them they’ve been compromised. Twenty-four hours later post list with attached government files to all message boards and news outlet.–
They sat near a creek. Spring had arrived. “Would you be my step mom?” he asked.
–Hack into . . . –
She loved this child as if he was her own.