Halcyon System 3 Chapter Thirty-Three

Mrs. Lightsen insisted that we read The Canterbury Tales.

That it was a ‘great classic,’ and that we’d ‘get a lot of understanding of both the medieval and timeless human experiences’ out of it.

What I got out of it is that Merriam and Webster are the two greatest non-mathematicians of all time. Formalizing language to make it…readable, at least…was an achievement on par with reaching the moon or figuring out gravity, and students—especially students whose teachers don’t insist on the original texts—owe them a debt of gratitude.

But, once we finally got Mrs. Lightsen to give us a copy that wasn’t written in Ye Olde Eenglish, with the weird ‘f’ instead of ‘s’ sometimes and the same word spelled nine different ways, she was…mostly right. It was kind of cool.

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SHOCKS Olympia Administrative Wing, Washington, USA - June 24, 2043, 9:33 AM

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Mrs. Nazaire is right. I can change the world. I can take my ball and go home.

But first, I need to figure out how.

Reality One tried it by simply filtering all the merge portals into kill rooms. That seemed to be working well for them, but the changes to the people who lived there, the changes to how they had to live…we don’t have time for that. It’s a better option than death, but we can’t possibly make it happen in the limited hours before Merge Prime extends too far.

We could, however, learn something from the Voiceless Singer program and Provisional Reality ARC.

Ironically, it’s probably SHOCKS’s most explored reality, not counting Reality Zero. They’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s in a single city, and unlike the woman who came back from a different reality months after the fact and whose testimonial is probably all lies, SHOCKS got corroborations from Alice, the RSTs, James, and, of course, me. They also have data.

A surprising amount of data.

Most of it is useless to me, but there’s quite a bit James and I grabbed on our way out of the research mezzanine and recorded in our fight with the Voiceless Singer there. I need access to that. More importantly, I need access to the raw, unfiltered data in those recordings. The Provisional Reality ARC data, not the stuff SHOCKS figured out with their lexicon. In other words, I need to get high on not-LSD and watch some movies.

Doctor Twitchy’s more than happy to provide me with the formula, and even reveals that he’s synthesized some of the stuff. I don’t know which researcher was getting high, but they’ve been busy digging into Provisional Reality ARC’s history.

I’m not sure what kind of shadowy government organization’s cool with a fifteen-year-old taking synthetic hallucinogens, either. I guess when things get this close to the end, the rules go away, replaced with the truth that only the results matter.

I make myself comfortable in Director White’s office. “You’re ready?” Doctor Twitchy asks.

“Yes. Let’s start it up.”

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Sidney had found his enemy.

James was the enemy.

It explained everything. Why he couldn’t track down his foe’s base no matter how hard he looked. Why he hadn’t suffered a single attack on his scouts, his dozens of subsidiary bases across Reality Zero—with more on the way—or the main base in SHOCKS Olympia. Because his enemy wasn’t playing. James had already lost before Sidney even started the ‘Explore’ phase.

The second he realized it, he started converting processing loops away from tracking down his foe. Whether it was the System leaving Reality Zero or James’s death, there would be no battle. Instead, he needed hunter-seekers. Scouts. No, even better. Programs that would find something—anything—odd, and that, instead of reporting on it like a scout, would isolate it and start experimenting. Flexible programming, novel solutions, and SHOCKS-derived counter-ICE to deal with the passive defenders James might have closer to the source.

Then, Sidney sat back and stared at the virtual monitor. And waited.

He’d have killed for some cheese puffs or a citrus-flavored soda. Even a Coke Zero would be the best thing he’d tasted in decades. Instead, he had nothing but a representation of the search. He idly scrolled across the ‘map’ of SHOCKS’s databases, corporations’ profits and losses, and the records of quadrillions of inputs into hundreds of social media sites. Sidney could have revealed thousands of illegal activities—theft, bribery, blackmail, insider trading, companies that hadn’t been solvent in years but kept cooking the books, and more—but that wasn’t what he was looking for.

One of his processing loops found something, though. In a video game, of all places. In Knights of the Apocalypse Three.

It was written into the code for Tarra Deadfall, the least popular Knight in the game.

An address to a website that hadn’t existed when the game came out. That hadn’t existed before Merge Prime started, in fact. It was nearly brand new.

Sidney thanked the hunter-seeker loop that had discovered it, then directed dozens of loops to investigate the site.

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Some of the older students used to talk about ‘tripping balls’ at school.

They didn’t say how much it sucks, though.

Doctor Twitchy’s essentially feeding me different information, and I’m trying to process it into something I can understand. While seeing, hearing, and smelling all sorts of things that aren’t there. The hardest part of this is…

The hardest part of this is…

I forget.

But I am learning a lot. About the Voiceless Singers. About what they were researching, and how it was all put together. The math that runs their world. The equations.

Which would be great if I could articulate any of it.

Mrs. Helquist used to tell this story about a kid who swore he could understand calculus, but only while he was high on weed. She never believed him, partially because he couldn’t pass any of her tests. Neither did I. Why would anyone want to only understand the truth about math when they couldn’t remember any of what they were learning?

But right now, I understand. The Truth is clear. I understand it clearly. I just can’t explain any of it at all.

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The website had been a trap.

Sidney expected it. He’d been ready for it. And so, when the firewalls closed and the ICE poured into it from every side, his processing loops simply activated SHOCKS’s own defenses, turned them against the attack programs, and watched the carnage. He’d lost a couple of loops, but nothing compared to what the trap should have accomplished.

If anything, that was proof that James was behind this. That trap had been transparent to Sidney, but anyone who stumbled onto the site would have been surprised and overwhelmed. Worse, the attacks were designed to infect augs. It wasn’t just an assault on snooper programs or hunter-seekers. It was deliberately designed to stop everyone from being able to see what the site was hiding.

So, what was the site hiding?

Sidney didn’t rush in to find out. Instead, new hunter-seeker loops carefully checked every corner of the code’s structure for more ambushes, sweeping the website until they were sure they’d destroyed and disabled every one of James’s defenses, bypassed every trap, and marked every single possible threat. It was like a pack of dogs hunting for something buried. By the time they were done, the site was trashed. Nonfunctional.

But its secrets were ready to be exposed. And only at that point did Sidney carefully move his first fully-connected loop inside.

It was a map. A treasure map. Red code in dotted lines, lakes and oceans and mountain ranges of ones and zeroes. Battered and crushed and crumpled into a ball, then concealed within the kind of equations that would have reduced Claire—or Einstein—to tears instantly. Most people wouldn’t recognize it as more than trash.

Most people weren’t Sidney.

He deployed his pack of hunting hound processing loops along the path to the treasure. Whatever James had tried to hide, he would find it. He had to. It was the most important thing he could possibly do right now.

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The Voiceless Singer.

Provisional Reality ARC. And Reality One.

The taste of lemons, pure sugar, and hot peppers, all at once.

And the smell of sweat.

But, as I come out of whatever that was, head pounding with the worst migraine I’ve ever had—including the ones my old augs gave me—I can’t help but smile. Because I have it. Sort of.

The Voiceless Singer program in Provisional Reality ARC was right. The angel itself was strong enough to fight most anomalies that came through merge portals. It had the ability to win. And I beat it. I could do it again, and do it without Absolution.

I’m strong enough. Not to fight a trillion merges, but to take the ball.

Provisional Reality ARC didn’t fall to Merge Prime because the Voiceless Singer wasn’t strong enough. It fell because the Voiceless Singer couldn’t be everywhere. Not at the same time. And that’s still a problem for me, but it’s one I can solve. They tried to solve it by making more Voiceless Singers, but they ran out of time, or something. There were thousands of them in space, under the yellow sun, but only the one active one.

I can’t be thousands of Claires. But Reality One had the right idea, too. And so did I.

Reality One’s strategy of killing anomalies on entry works. And they’d managed to narrow the number of merge portals down to only a handful—otherwise, how could they have produced those fortress cities around every single one?

The equation’s getting more detailed. Instead of simply ‘take Reality Zero and go home’ as my strategy, I can be the Guardian Angel of Death it needs. I just need to figure out how to narrow down the number of merge portals to a reasonable number.

Easy.

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Sidney grabbed the treasure and retreated.

There was no other reason to be here. Millions of processing loops had died in a massive heap, burned out and corrupted. His own loops had dug through the charnel, rooting through them to try to find something—anything—that James might’ve left behind.

A mere dozen loops, at the very bottom, with programs dedicated to data storage to the exclusion of all else—including accessing the data. James had been thorough; they looked just as dead as the millions of other loops. He plugged his virtual nose against the acrid scent of digital death, pulled the dozen loops into himself, and left James’s final resting place in peace.

A copy of Sidney the JAMES Unit might’ve been, but James deserved the rest. He’d fought the best battle he could.

Now, safely ensconced within the black sector’s JAMES Unit, Sidney began opening his plunder.

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It’s not easy.

In an ideal world, I could close every single merge portal all across Reality Zero, separate the world from the stupid fucking game the Halcyon System and Merge Prime are playing, and go home. Yes, with my ball.

Mrs. Nazaire thinks I can do it. She doesn’t understand how big a task it is, though.

It might be easier to solve an equation to kill Merge Prime and the System, even now. But just because an equation is easy to solve doesn’t mean it’s possible for it to work in reality.

That’s something I’ve learned—the math doesn’t always line up with reality. The Truths I’ve been relying on for a decade aren’t always the real Truths. And sometimes, what I want isn’t what I can actually do. That’s why I’m convinced that separating from the multiverse is the correct path. Nothing else will work when math hits reality.

I’m missing a piece of the equation, though. It’s scrawled across a whiteboard, circled in red, and crossed out. Until I have that one piece, there’s nothing else to do.

Here’s the math:

Variable One: Am I strong enough to fight—and beat—anything that comes out of a merge portal? I want to think so. I’m stronger than a Voiceless Singer, stronger than a magma anomaly, and—if I can run and think—stronger than the soldiers that run the supertank in Reality 3109. The Halcyon System, using Reality Zero Danger levels, put me at Qishi-Danger. That puts me at the bottom of the same bracket Merge Prime and the System itself are at the top of.

Variable Two: How many merge portals can I keep clear? In an ideal world, it’s one. In reality, I think I can probably handle three to four if I want time to eat and sleep, but less if I want, you know, friends, family, time to play Knights of the Apocalypse, a relationship, college, a job, or any of the things people are supposed to get. I don’t know how much of that I want—the relationship game’s always felt like a waste of time to me—but I know I want some of it.

Variable Three: Can we actually shut down enough merge portals to leave the game?

That’s where I start getting stuck. If it was one or two, Strauss’s bombs could do it, but we can’t produce enough bombs to disconnect every reality from Reality Zero.

I need James.

He could solve this. Or at least, he could tell me if I was on the wrong track. Mrs. Nazaire isn’t the right person for the job. Neither is Sora—I thought about talking to her, but I think our friendship might not be strong enough to lean on her anymore. I’ve already crushed her so much, and if I want to stay friends with her—assuming I have time for friends—I need to leave her out of this.

But I don’t have him. All I have is a JAMES Unit that’s not online yet, that can’t help me solve my problems—the math kind or otherwise—and—

[Claire, Sidney here.]

“James?” I say before I realize that the voice is wrong, much less that he literally said who he was. I’m already tearing up; the relationship game might be stupid, but James…James was the closest person in my life for a month, and I haven’t had a chance to really mourn him. Not like I need to.

[No. James is dead. I’ve been to his grave,] Sidney says.

It’s another punch. I almost can’t take it. How he could be so matter-of-fact about something that hurts so much—it’s like he’s tearing off the band-aid and sticking duct tape on the wound, just so he can tear it again. “Why?” I manage to ask.

[Why hurt you like this? I can see your biometrics just like James could. I know what I’m doing to you. But we don’t have time for this shit,] Sidney says. [I can solve your problem.]

"How?”

[Because James was based on me. I understood him. He was part of the Halcyon System, so he knew the consequences of what you were doing. Whether you’d bombed the System and destroyed James in the process or you’d done what you did and tried to take a player out of the game, the end result would be the same. He knew letting you carry out your mission would kill him.]

“Then why do it?” I ask. “Why let me do what I did, when he had the power to stop me?”

[Because he loved you.]

“Ew,” I say automatically, but it’s the truth. It was never romantic, boyfriend/girlfriend love—which I’m disgustingly thankful for—but it was something akin to what I have with Alice. Or Sora. He cared about me, and I cared—no, I care—about him. He’s dead. Sidney’s right. James is gone. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t my best friend. Maybe more. A sibling?

Do siblings have to be blood relatives? I’m not sure. Adopted siblings are still siblings, right? So why couldn’t James have been my brother?

The tears are flowing. Sidney lets me sit for a moment. Not long, though. Like he just said, we don’t have time for this shit. [So, James knew he was dead. He took precautions. Made contingencies. You gave him all the time in the world when Alice got you stuck in the night your mom died. And he took advantage of it.]

“To do what?”

James—no, Sidney—doesn’t respond for a moment. Then he clears his throat in my ear. Loudly. [He buried a few processing loops deep inside a bunker made from his digital self. On them, he recorded a handful of elements that he’d copied over from the Halcyon System. They’re massive. Absolutely massive. I uncovered them a half hour ago, and I’ve been compiling them across every computer system I have access to in Reality Zero. But…]

He trails off. I wait, expecting something more. He had access to the Halcyon System? What does that even mean? I have no idea.

[I rebuilt it.]

My aug flickers. Then it reboots. The vertigo hits like a brick wall; I wasn’t ready for it, and I find myself slumping against my whiteboard as the world spins. I hit the ground, and as I do, my aug flickers back to life—and it’s covered in familiar-looking words.

{{{STATUS LAST UPDATED C31 P2}}}

[System Access: 100%]

[Recalculating Skills, Knowledges, Bonds, and Inquiries. Adjusting Stability]

[Claire Pendleton]

          ►Stability 8/10

          ►Skills - Endurance 9, Urban Combat 4, Anomalous Computing Systems 10, Physical Anomaly Resistance 18, Open Mind 1, Revolver Mastery 26, Compulsion Resistance 2, SHOCKS Database 1, Mental Fortitude 3, Reality Anchoring 4, First Aid 2, Toxin Resistance 7, Radiation Resistance 2, Reality Skipper Shells, Bullet Time 2, Slither, Smoke Form, Analyze, Mergewalk 3, Mindscape, Soundbreak, Determination 2, Absolution 2, Truthseeker 2

          ►Truths - Anomalous Bond, West End High, SHOCKS Research Facility, JAMES, Stag Lord, Halcyon Bond, Li Mei and Infovampires, Dr. Dwyer, Provisional Reality AAA, Mergekilling, Part of the Ship, Guardian Angel, Void Bond, Reality One, Alexander the God, Giant Spiders, Heat Death

          ►Inquiries (0/5)

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Sidney clears his throat a second time. [I am the System!] Then he laughs.

Uncontrollably.

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