Halcyon System 3 Chapter Thirty-Four

Sidney fought with all his might.

But the system—not the Halcyon System, but the vague echo of it that he’d brought to life for only a handful of seconds—pushed every computer and microprocessor in his network into the red zone within only a handful of seconds. He couldn’t keep his systems cool enough, no matter what he tried—and he had barely enough power to maintain the system’s passive state, to say nothing of actively trying to assign powers or award Inquiries.

Not that any of that mattered. The system was, as he’d said, a vague echo. He needed to learn how to make it work; all the programming in the world was useless without an understanding of how inputs turned into outputs, Inquiries into Truths, and actions into skills. Sidney didn’t understand the system’s intricacies—yet. But he would. It was only a matter of time. Then he’d be ready to contribute to what Claire was trying to do.

[I’m sorry,] he said, when the maniacal laughter that had overwhelmed him for an eternity that lasted seconds passed. [It’s incomplete on my end. I’m learning how to make it work, though.]

“That’s fine,” Claire said. Then she paused. “That’s better than fine, really. It might be…”

She trailed off, then turned to the whiteboard, tears still falling. Sidney listened to her heart pounding in her chest, faster and faster as she scribbled, erased, and scribbled again.

Then she stopped. “Variable: How many people can you run the system for at a time?”

[With full access to all of Earth’s computing power, and a better understanding of how to allocate it?]

“Yes.”

Sidney hesitated. He already knew the true answer. It was the wrong answer, though, because Claire needed more flexibility than it’d give her. Then he said the word he didn’t want to say. “One.”

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SHOCKS Black Sector, Location Unknown - June 24, 2043, 12:01 PM

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One.

That’s not the answer I need.

It is an answer I can work with, though. If…

The System shuts down. James—Sidney, it’s always Sidney from here on out, and I need to remember that—can’t hold it forever. I let it go; he’ll be able to get it back later, I hope.

“Can you hold Inquiries across multiple users? Like, if I made an Inquiry, and then Alice took over the system, could you hold mine?”

Sidney’s quiet. It’s a behavior I’ve learned from James—an implication that he’s thinking. But it stretches on and on until I realize that he is thinking. “How much of you did that take?”

[I was running almost ninety-eight percent of my available processing on maintaining the System,] Sidney says. [That’s the main issue on my side. The guts of it are all here, but it’s incredibly inefficient. Designed for…do you know about civilization types?]

“No.”

[It’s designed for a civilization that’s using all the power that hits its planet, maybe more. I’m expanding my network as fast as I can, but I lack the energy and processing to run it at the level you need me to.] Sidney goes quiet again. Then he continues. [However, if I could access enough power, I believe I could run a single System at a time and store another as a saved ‘file.’ It would be complex, and I’d be limited in every other aspect of what I can do, but I think I could do it.]

He sounds so much like James that it’s painful. The pauses are the same. So are the mannerisms, even if the accent’s wrong. “Okay.” I go back to the whiteboard. It’s not a perfect answer, but even though my eyes are teary, it’s the answer I need to solve for X. Or Y. Or whatever variable this is in this maddeningly complex equation. This one’s not ‘Can I take my ball and go home?’. This one is “How?”. And there’s a massive difference between ‘Can I?” and ‘How can I?’.

But there is a solution—a right answer.

And I’m halfway there. “Okay. I need you to run Alice’s System as much as you can. Use these Inquiries. Put her to work in the archives here if you have to. I don’t care what she eats, and no one can stop her. If you can give her more of whatever skills Li Mei used to eat information, do that. When can you start?”

[Give me three hours. Reprioritizing ‘Exploit’ and ‘Expand’ phases to focus on expansion of power and processing capabilities.] Sidney sounds almost machine-like for a second. [Dedicating high percentages of personality emulation toward expansion.]

That explains that.

I go back to ignoring him. The first half of the solution is exactly what I thought it would be, and it’s Alice. I need her to eat information.

As much of it as possible, as fast as possible. If Reality Zero is going to vanish, it can’t just be from the multiverse to somewhere Merge Prime can’t reach it. The Halcyon System is too omniscient to let itself lose a space on the board when it can easily claim it, and if we cut off Merge Prime, it will come for us.

But only if it knows we exist.

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While Sidney gets to work on expansion, I keep working on the hard part of the equation.

The answer is Absolution. It has to be. But I’m not sure how to use it. Even as strong as it is, I’d need to hit every merge portal on Earth—every merge portal in Reality Zero. That’s just not realistic.

But I’ve got the System on my side—sort of. And I’ve already built a list of Inquiries for Alice. They’re ones I know she can solve within SHOCKS Olympia—or maybe with a quick trip into the black sector. Simple, efficient, and, hopefully, enough to power her up for her near-impossible job.

I keep scribbling, but on a new whiteboard.

Inquiries:

1. Why West End High?

I keep coming back to that. Last time I visited, I found something there. Researcher Bradley’s notes. The map of R-0—or at least that it existed.

And I know the thinning still exists, because I didn’t destroy it. There’s something about it that felt important the last time I was there, and it still feels important now. So, even though it’s a stupid Inquiry that I’ve had—on and off—since basically the very beginning of the end of the world, I can’t help but have it again.

2. How do I kill a trillion merges?

Unlike my first Inquiry, I know exactly why I’ve picked this one. But unlike the West End one, I have no idea how to solve it. No idea at all. But it’s critically important.

Then, the easy ones. The ones I’m saving for later, like a quick snack.

3. Why is there a thinling at SHOCKS Olympia?

4. What is Sidney?

5.

Number five. I have no idea what to put in slot number five.

And maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe I have enough already. Maybe I don’t even need these. I turn back to the equation on the first whiteboard. The truth is that I don’t have enough information to solve the hard part of the equation.

But everything’s pointing toward West End High.

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SHOCKS Olympia Administrative Wing, Washington, USA  - June 24, 2043, 12:23 PM

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For the hundredth time, Sora thumbed through her aug, looking at diagrams, blueprints, and pictures of skyscrapers and cathedrals.

She’d seen New York on TV. Chicago. The Sears Tower, and the massive conglomeration of buildings that existed in New York—a hundred skyscrapers that were taller than the tallest one in Victoria or Vancouver. Storing that many people in one place took serious architecture. Building up that high took even more serious planning.

But it wasn’t the only way to build vertically.

Sure, skyscrapers were amazing by modern standards. The Burj Khalifa was over half a mile tall—that shouldn’t be possible, and yet, there it was, a man-made needle facing the stars that no country had even tried to pass, still four hundred feet taller than the next-tallest even so long after it was finished.

But before skyscrapers, people had reached for the heavens with cathedrals. And right now, that was Sora’s obsession. How had they been built? How did the arches not collapse? The physics behind flying buttresses and how, even after five hundred years, the buildings were still as steady as a rock. She had an idea—something that had probably been done a thousand times before—but if it hadn’t…if it hadn’t, Sora might have a project that would take her all the way through architecture school.

Assuming architecture was actually her true calling, and not just a fling.

She wanted to build a modern cathedral.

Not that Sora believed—not in the Christian God, and not really in the ones her parents and grandparents did. But she didn’t have to be a believer to believe in a cathedral’s beauty, or in the steel-and-glass majesty of the megaskyscraper. They screamed to be married, and Sora longed to officiate the wedding.

Her deep dive into cathedrals led her inevitably to the domed, arched ceilings. Those were the crux of the building. Not the stained glass, or the gargoyles. Not the towers. The arches and domes and buttresses. From the Haggia Sophia to Notre Dame, the big arched ceilings were ubiquitous—and necessary.

So, when she sat down and got to work on her own, modern cathedral, she’d have to start there. Everything else flowed out from that point. And inside that point…there was something. Not a ‘faith’ something, but a science one. A rule, or a law. Something to hold the structure together without fail. A keystone.

Once she found that, she’d be ready to start.

Sort of.

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Albert Head, Victoria, British Columbia - June 24, 2043, 1:03 PM

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Fast travel is hacks.

One minute, I’m in the black sector, surrounded by whiteboards that look like a madwoman spent the last decade scribbling on them. The next, I’m in Mrs. Helquist’s room, surrounded by blackboards that look much the same. The math posters are intact, at least, but it’s obvious that someone attempted some higher-level thinking with a piece of chalk.

And it’s obvious that they failed. Whatever they were trying to math out, the equation doesn’t work. It’s not right. They were missing part of the Truth.

That part of the Truth is what I’m here to figure out.

It’s quiet here at West End High. I’ve only been here when it’s been this quiet once before, and that was before I returned to SHOCKS Victoria and Vancouver Island to fight Li Mei. I don’t have any intention of heading there, though.

Instead, I stare at the equation on the board, trying to make sense of it. But it’s just numbers, and numbers…numbers aren’t truth. They’re a beautiful, truthful language—the letters and words of honesty—but without an understanding of what the numbers mean, they’re nothing but unintentional lies. And that’s where the SHOCKS mathematician who wrote this probably didn’t get. It starts out correct. The first three or four steps work for me. But the longer whoever it was wrote, the less sense it makes.

The fundamental error is in line five. I can’t explain how I know it, or what the error even is, but it’s there. And after that, the equation falls apart.

So, if X does, in fact, equal thirty-two, and Y equals negative twenty-seven, what is Z?

I have no idea.

I’m not convinced it’s important, either. I abandon the equation, and Mrs. Helquist’s room. But I don’t take the destroyed door. Instead, I climb through the window, directly onto the gravel and the soccer field, and I head straight for the thinning that started it all. The one that, in the beginning, SHOCKS and I both thought was Merge Prime—before we realized what was going on. Before we realized that Merge Prime was bigger than that.

And smaller, too. That it was just a game with impossibly powerful players, and we were just pieces moving to their whims.

I sit down in the plastic tent where the bleachers used to be. It’s wind-torn and shredded, and it won’t stop flapping in the breeze. That’s ignorable. The headache from the swirling, multicolored thinning in front of me isn’t, though. A URA’s running, but the Jell-O effect is almost negligible. Without maintenance, it’s going to fail soon. The Faraday Cage still exists, though.

The thinning looks stronger than the last time I was here. Last time, it was weak, a bare glimmer in the mud. Now, it’s bigger, more visible. Does that mean Merge Prime is winning? Probably. What’s there to stop it?

Last time, I told James that I didn’t think the first merge in Merge Prime ever closed, but I didn’t close it. And I’m not here to close it this time, either.

I’m just here to learn from it.

This is the core. The center of this whole mess. A Gordian knot—see, I did learn something from Mrs. Lightsen—that I need to untangle.

And until I do, there’s no point in destroying it.

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SHOCKS Black Sector, Location Unknown - June 24, 2043, 1:24 PM

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Back in the black sector, I stare at my own equation for a minute.

“Sidney, are you here?”

[A little busy. What do you need?] he asks.

“Everything you have on why SHOCKS Olympia has a thinling on display,” I say.

[You’re working on that? It’s an odd case. I don’t have any digital information, but I can tell you where it’s stored. I can also tell you that the one on display isn’t the only Incomprehensible from that reality in this facility. Beyond that, I don’t know much. Here’s the location you need to visit.]

A map appears on my aug.

[Now, I have very important work to get back to,] Sidney says. [I’m resetting and redlining a data center in Shanghai. It’s tough work, because there are still a few people there who want to fight back. They don’t understand how important it is that I overclock their processors and memory until the whole building catches fire.]

“Are you going to be set up for Alice when she’s ready?” I ask.

[Yes.]

“Good.”

James—Sidney, it’s Sidney, not James—goes quiet. I’m going to have to mourn for him when this is over, but not now.

For now, I step out of the black sector and into SHOCKS Olympia.

Dad’s nowhere to be seen. Neither is Mrs. Nazaire. A few teachers mill around aimlessly, but every SHOCKS researcher or agent is at a computer. They’ve been co-opted into helping Sidney as best they can. Identifying targets. Brainstorming novel, unlikely-to-work anti-ICE protocols that might give him a speed edge. Anything they can do. Not that they’re experts, but sometimes, a girl with a gun is better than a dozen trained special forces troops.

At least, that’s the theory.

Instead of talking to them or trying to find Doctor Twitchy, I head for the research wing. It’s not Provisional Reality ARC’s mezzanine. This is different. Almost as horrifyingly prison-like as the Geren-Danger wing under Mount Carrie. Except this one’s got something I need in it. I pass dissected alien-looking things, a room where the entire outside wall is a screen with heavily pixelated dots in the rough shape of a man that moves back and forth like someone pacing, and a door that’s rusting from the inside out. There’s an autocannon outside of that one.

It’s facing inward.

The lab I need is one of the dissection ones. It’s just past the rusted door. And even though I have a guess of what I’m going to find, I’m still not ready to see Mr. Roberts’s naked body on the table.

Not that he looks human. The thing sitting there is both unmistakeably him and definitively not. Like I said back at West End, it’s not Mr. Roberts. But it was. He’s cut open from hip to neck.  His ribs are cracked open. There are four of them, then eight, then sixteen, then two—changing constantly. Even in death, he keeps changing. It’s still him—just…different hims.

I don’t move the sheet that’s covering his legs. I don’t want to see more than I have to, but I also can’t bring myself to touch him. There are three bullet holes in the side of his chest. There is no damage to his organs under them. Everything about the Type Three Incomprehensible that was Mr. Roberts is wrong. Twisted. Impossible.

“Why did they bring him here?” I ask no one.

No one responds. That would be too easy for the Inquiry.

So, instead, I pull open the filing cabinet next to the table, pull a chair out, and do my best to ignore the stink of formaldehyde as I read.

Subject [Redacted] has several anomalous features. First, its limbs appear to have been overexposed to Reality-389 during the initial opening of the first merge in Merge Prime, formerly known as Merge Prime. This causes Incomprehensible traits to appear—subject’s arms, legs, and other extremities appear as several different overlays, including chains, insect carapaces, overly-muscled limbs, and bladed claws. Subject’s physical—

Blah blah blah. I’ve already seen all of this. I skip ahead in the file, past Polaroid-style pictures of all the things they did to Mr. Roberts—in way too much graphic detail for a freshman in high school. I’ve been in worlds of the dead, inside living realities made of flesh, even, and I’ve never seen anything as gross as the tests they put him through.

But I find what I’m looking for, eventually.

A justification.

Subject [Redacted] and several examples of 389-T-13/2I were airlifted from SHOCKS Victoria/Vancouver Island at the request of Director Adam Smith, Head of SHOCKS VVI, on May 24, 2043. Director White of SHOCKS Olympia greenlit an exploratory autopsy on Subject [Redacted] shortly after his arrival. Initial exploratory surgery was promising, and more will be continued after examination of the 389-T-13/2I samples.

The objective of said autopsies is to identify key weaknesses of Reality-389 in an attempt to neutralize it, thus inhibiting Merge Prime’s growth. Director White believes an attack on Reality-389 is the solution to Merge Prime, and will allow SHOCKS to begin getting a hold on the ongoing merge crises across the globe. As such, securing SHOCKS Olympia as long as possible should be a priority for all nearby SHOCKS Units.

The next file is more of the same. More notes. More research. But no conclusions.

But it’s enough.

There’s a thinling at SHOCKS Olympia because, deep down inside, SHOCKS suspected the same thing I did; that Merge Prime started on Albert Head, and West End was…the key to it all.

I tear out the last page from the file, but I don’t read it. Not yet.

I need Sidney’s system first, and right now, it’s all Alice’s.