sounded throughout the room. The marquee displaying birthday wishes to the dead Sheldon Surina was now announcing the imminent arrival of his descendant Margaret onstage. Within seconds, industry mavens were cutting their multi connections to the party and preparing to reconnect inside the nearby auditorium.
Frederic Patel vanished without so much as a glance back in their direction. Natch breathed a sigh of relief, following Quell out the same doors they had entered through. The show was about to begin.
22
'I'm telling you, this can't go on forever. One of these days, the Data Sea is just going to collapse.'
'They've been saying that for a century.'
'But come on, look at how much more bandwidth we're using these days. Multi, the Jamm, the Sigh. Even quantum computing has its limits.'
'One point three billion multi projections at Marcus Surina's funeral, and not a single glitch. That's all I have to say.'
'Yeah, but-'
Jara stood and listened to the jabber of the couple beside her as she waited for Margaret Surina to take the stage. Personally, she sided with the doomsayer who feared the imminent collapse of the computational system. She looked around at the thirty-five thousand visible spectators filling the arena and tried to imagine the seraphic order of number needed to describe the bandwidth requirements for so many people.
But the vertigo did not end there. The Surina auditorium statistics told her there were actually 413 million multi projections here waiting for Margaret to reveal the mystery behind the Phoenix Project. 413 million people whose brains were trying to maintain the illusion that they were real bodies inhabiting real Cartesian space, when that was clearly impossible.
The analyst summoned a calculator and wide-eyed her way through the math. 413 million people wedged into a space designed to fit thirty-five thousand real bodies. Which meant that right now almost twelve thousand people from every corner of the solar system believed they were standing in the exact same spot as Jara....
Then she noticed that the attendance had skyrocketed another 150 million spectators. Jara shook her head violently. Human minds could not comprehend such vastness. Better to swallow the sweet lotus of multi and be done with it.
Especially when she had so many more urgent questions to contend with. Like where was the rest of the fiefcorp? What was this 'Phoenix Project' that had so entranced the public's imagination and completely absorbed the world's richest woman for years? How did Natch fit into this whole puzzle? And how would this new technology affect her job?
Just then, a young woman in a green-and-blue Surina security uniform passed mere centimeters away from Jara's right side. The woman-no, the girl-had her dartgun drawn and was clearly petrified. I'd be petrified too, thought Jara, if I had a few thousand Defense and Wellness Council troops on my heels.
Which brought up the most perplexing question of all: What was the Council waiting for?
Moments later, Margaret Surina took the stage. Jara hadn't seen her arrive, so she couldn't say for sure whether Sheldon Surina's heir had multied onto the stage. Margaret had chosen a formless robe that draped across the floor like a tent and slowly changed colors from blue to green and back again. Her frosted black hair lay across her shoulders. She seemed completely calm, like the commander who had already greenlighted a battle plan and now waited for its outcome to slowly unfold.
And just as the bodhisattva opened her mouth to speak, a hundred doors slammed open at once, and the Council made its entrance.
With dartguns crossed over their chests and eyes fixed forward, they came marching into the auditorium single file, like robots. The crowd parted anxiously to make way for the soldiers. Some cut their multi connections on the spot, but most quickly recognized that the officers were carrying few disruptors. No, whatever High Executive Borda's intentions were, sowing panic in the crowd was not one of them. The lead Council officers stopped meters away from the stage.
If Margaret feared an imminent death, she did not show it. She regarded the intruders with an icy stare that said, Whatever you have planned for me, you're going to have to do it in front of 700 million people. Jara did not know much about Margaret Surina aside from the standard drudgic platitudes and generalities, but at this moment she felt a great surge of admiration for the woman.
The Council troops stood at attention, their rifles before them, and did nothing.
A hush fell over the crowd as the bodhisattva began to speak.
'Once upon a time,' said Margaret, 'we believed in technology.
'Our ancestors were the original engineers. They discovered the laws that govern the universe and learned how to master them. They paved the earth with rock and sent wheeled machines to rumble across it. They spread to the four corners of the earth and, not satisfied, flew to the heavens. Still not satisfied, they flew to the stars.
'And somewhere along the way, they got lost.
'Somewhere between the first man to build stone tools and the first woman to create an artificial intelligence, our ancestors became separated from their innovations. They stopped seeing their creations as extensions of themselves, and started seeing them as external to themselves. Other. Distant. Remote.
'Science became an impersonal god, a grim idol beyond reproach or appeal.
'And once technology was no longer a part of them, it became an enemy to conquer.
'The god that had been embedded within them all became a force to be chained and made to do their bidding. Instead of seeking communion with the god, instead of striving to understand the kernel of truth that is within us all, they sacrificed their own skills to feed him. Our machines will do more so we may do less, they said.
'And so, in the apogee of their folly, our ancestors created the Autonomous Minds.'
A rustle of disapproval from the audience. A hateful murmuring.
'The Autonomous Minds: eight machines committed to managing the world economy, eight machines entrusted to safeguarding the environment, eight machines consigned to solving the problems of human diplomacy. Eight intelligences so vastly other that our ancestors feared to `taint' them with human morals and ideals. Imagine having more faith in a lifeless machine than in a human being!
'Our ancestors abandoned their independence to the Autonomous Minds. They delivered the reins of the earth into the hands of the Minds. They trusted in the order of the Keepers to convey their will, using the arcane machine tongues that only the Keepers could speak.
'It was to prove humanity's greatest mistake.'
A monolithic structure floating in the midst of the auditorium, a holographic representation of the world's first orbital colony, Yu. Circular platforms within platforms performing an intricate dance to the symphony of G-force. Gardens of unparalleled lushness and beauty like that mythical garden lost in the deeps of time. Citizens basking in the warm spring of eternal Progress under controlled atmospheric domes.
'Yu,' Margaret continued. 'Humanity's greatest hope. An experiment to bring us out of earth's cradle and into the stars. A self-contained community of ten thousand, constructed in orbit above the earth, stocked with a cross-section of humanity's best and brightest. Yu was the culmination of thousands of years of Chinese art, science and culture-and its controls were placed in the hands of the Autonomous Minds and their Keepers.
'But this arrangement was not destined to last.'
Shrieks, sighs, tears of anguish from the crowd at the first detonation. And the second.
Daisy-chain explosions rocking the orbital structure, domes bursting and debris spinning off into the void of merciless space. The spinning discs suddenly still. Pandemonium. Colonists scrambling like mad for their primitive spacecraft. Companions reaching to hold their loved ones in a last embrace. And then the death spiral-the shuddering descent into the earth's atmosphere-the shrieking burning hellfire plunge through the clouds, in an unstoppable trajectory towards the lofty towers of New York City ...
Bracing for impact-
