Bread Crumbs

in
Mobius Space

By

Larry Ayres
V1.00-2003

Larry Ayres c/o

Electronic Services Unit 16
11245 183rd St, Suite 223
Cerritos, CA 90703
310.291.7662
larry@esunit16.com

www.esunit16.com

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PART I

Chapter 1
His cilia were about to go on strike. Row by row they had been
abused by high decibel sound levels and had taken to lying down on the
job, squealing complaints constantly in his ear. Even above the whine of
the 1150cc rotary engine on his motorcycle, they protested the torture of
the previous evening. Last night he had played a real concert, with real
amplification and with the players and audience in physical attendance. He
wondered, what other art form required its performer to damage the
sensory organ of his craft? Then he had to admit to himself: the wounds
were self-inflicted. He could have used ear guards, but plastic attenuators
blunt the raw, visceral feeling of performing almost as much as playing on
a virtual stage.
He was of a vanishing breed. Since before he was born, music,
indeed most arts, had been dying. Oh, there was plenty of talk about art,
many museums, uncountable video shows and satellite radio programs
crammed full of the sights and sounds of people whom press agents called
artists. But in fact, most were merely moderately attractive people whose
minimal talents (and lack of surgical enhancements) would have relegated
them to some clerical job 50 years earlier. However, to the masses, they
had the appearance of an artist (if not the training), and they had the sound
of an artist, since technology could repair any defect in ability or
shortcoming in talent. And they pleased these masses, if only long enough
for them and their handlers to make a small fortune, until some other
"artist" captured their spot on top for 15 minutes.
Yes, he was of a vanishing breed; Billy could actually play his
bass, and play it extremely well.
William Derricks was tracing a sinusoidal path down the
switchbacks of the coastal range in western Oregon, heading for a beach he
was sure would be deserted. Chocolate brown, compact, muscular, boyish
yet imposing with his shaved head under a heads-up display helmet, he had
left the club right after the last encore, letting the road crew strike the
equipment for transport to the next live gig, sometime next week,
somewhere else. Billy didn't take too much notice of when and where.
Since he was rarely out of touch he'd get the information regardless, and he
had an intuitive sense of which way to travel, just so he was never more
than a day from the next concert. Most of his performances were virtual
anyway, and with his Sat-Link he could jam from just about anywhere.
Besides, he wasn't one to hang around in a club late at night anyway.
So he had chosen this beach in front of him on this late September
morning, just a few hours before the European Cyber Consort was to link

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with him for a Net performance of "The Wall" on the 53rd anniversary of
its release. (Enough still lived to appreciate this milestone in modern art-
rock). Gilmore was still alive but the rest were gone. In his eighties, the
guitarist's chops had deteriorated; however the notes were all in his head,
and that was all that mattered on the virtual stage. Billy was covering the
Waters part, a great honor, though the vocals were left to another.
A hell of a thing for a ULSI chip designer to be doing, he thought,
for that was what he really was, a first-class, PhD holding, IEEE card-
carrying, hardware engineer. Playing bass was his avocation, not his
vocation. What a coup, though, to be in on that gig, albeit in NetSpace. At
the opening of the third millennium, thanks to his Sat-Link, he could
design or perform from anywhere his bike could take him, as well as places
it couldn't. For circuit layout it didn't matter if he was isolated from his
colleagues, but there was something not quite right about playing music
when your band mates were spread all around the world. On stage there
was real eye contact, body language, nuance, hell, even a scent that
connected the players. It takes sound less time to cross a large stage than it
takes data to fly from Europe; there was an obvious disconnect. The
threshold of perception in time is supposed to be around 10ms, but the
50ms lag from the other side of the world screwed up the feel something
terrible. So music that was slower and less metrical was better suited to
intercontinental ensembles.
Finally, the trigonometric road became Euclidean, and the beach,
empty this early on a chilly but clear morning, presented itself like a easel
for his musical murals. Sure, he was tired, but an occasional bump to his
circadian rhythms was a good thing, especially in the service of such a
excellent cause. The chill air would keep him fresh for a few more hours,
when he would find a little motel and get some sleep.
Billy parked his bike at the end of the unpaved road where the
sand got too deep for one-wheel drive. His Sat-Link had been charging off
the bike the whole trip from Eugene and was good for about four hours of
transmission, sufficient for “The Wall”. It wasn't heavy, even with the
power-pack and VR gear, so he packed it out over the dunes and onto the
sand. Such beauty, the Oregon beach at sunup, desolate, sounding of surf
and smelling of spray. The Alaskan Gulf was gearing up to deliver some
wicked storms, but so far only a whisper of the coming winter was in the
air.
With a slight sigh for the coming loss of tranquility he assembled
the equipment and donned the VR shades and headphones, and attached
the EEG patches to his shaved scalp. (Some fanatics actually had implants,
but Billy was wary of becoming a wirehead.) These took over his senses of
sight and hearing, even through his protesting ears--the rotary's whine
hadn’t allowed much rest for them. Dawn and the ocean roar were replaced

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by a classical concert stage and echoing techies shouting commands
through their interfaces.
The sea smell was so incongruous in this space. Virtual reality
had come a long way since the 1980s. Back then VR was little more than a
motion picture with surround sound, requiring a lot of bulky, expensive
equipment to produce an interesting but unconvincing unreal environment;
therefore VR was reserved for amusement parks and industrial simulations.
No one ever mistook one of these adventures for the real thing.
Improvements in VR had come in three areas: the equipment had
become much smaller and lighter and eventually portable. Increased
bandwidth technologies allowed interactivity, first wired and then wireless,
between VR adventurers. And the sensation of being elsewhere was
improved. By limiting real world input to the mind through swamping the
eyes and ears, and by subtly altering perceptibility with proprietary low-
power EM radiation, the virtual experience was now more like a dream
than a ride. There was no denying that it was a virtual space you had
entered, but with a little imagination and concentration the experience was
engrossing. Still, if ocean spray were blowing on your face you'd smell it,
feel the wetness, feel the chill.
It took him only a moment to establish a handshake with the
Consort. They weren't quite all online yet; some were involved in getting
Gilmore past his daily medication and connected up. But all reports were
that the last remaining Floyd was eager to get started.
Before signing on with the GameChamp megacorporation, Billy
had been a freelance consultant and was himself responsible for some of
this remarkable technology. He had been chief human input engineer for
the MIVI spec: Musical Instrument Virtual Interface. A combination of
gesture and EEG input, it allowed the musician to manipulate a single
instrument or entire orchestra, with a supreme sense of nuance being the
operative skill. A non-musician made just as bad a screeching noise on a
virtual violin as he did on a wooden one, maybe worse; MIVI was no
shortcut to proficiency. Once adept, though, a virtuoso could play beyond
his wildest fantasy. No instrument was ever accidentally out of tune, ever
broke a string, ever had a value clog with spit. Never did a cymbal crack or
a stick break. More, the range of any instrument could be stretched across
the extent of human hearing, and the dynamics expanded from thresholds
of hearing to pain. MIVI took the fine art of sampling to the edges of
perception. It also meant more training and practice of course, more years
of study, but true musicians were used to that.
Net technologies removed any constraint on venue. Tonight the
group was in the round in the Royal Albert Hall, clearly impossible in the
Real World. In addition, everyone in the audience had a front row seat
while everyone else seemed to be sitting behind. Since this was a

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traditional performance where the Wall would be built during the show,
floating and soaring in the audience was discouraged, lest it ruin the effect
of the band's self-imposed isolation.
With the arrival of David Gilmore, looking, virtually, as he did in
1980, the band started tuning up. While the MIVI program could keep
everyone in mathematically perfect intonation, manual maladjustment gave
the music a more human, organic sound. If the equipment could do
everything, what use was there for human performers? Purely cybernetic
players were possible, with random parameters and improvisation
algorithms to simulate anything from Perlman to Prince, but why?
Finally everyone was ready. The techies were at their monitors,
the band was plugged in, the audience was primed, and global concert
began as a Spitfire flamed overhead and crashed into the second
mezzanine, killing hundreds, much to their delight. The singer sounded
remarkably like Roger Waters (and without a vocal processor!) and of
course David Gilmore was David Gilmore, the consummate Floydian.
Many of the animations that had been flashed 2D on the wall in 1980 were
now marching, diving, and swirling around the band and the audience.
Everyone knew The Wall word for word, gesture for gesture, and when the
time came the concert-goers shouted in unison, "leave us kids alone!" The
effect was bloodcurdling. Billy guessed that the Neo-Nazi scene would be
extraordinarily disturbing.
All in all, the outcome was intoxicating. The honor of being
chosen to play, the gestalt of the band, the rapport with the audience, the
scope of the performance--this was turning out to be the best virtual
concert he'd ever been involved with. It wasn't like the little blues club last
night in Eugene. Nothing could really replace that. But god, this was good!
Yet Billy had the nagging sense that something was not quite
right. Something was missing. Nothing musical; everything was as perfect
as it could be, given the transmission delays from around the world. The
audience was digging it enormously; he could feel that even over the
ethernet. He felt fine, not tired or fuzzy, given his lack of sleep. And a
quick check during a tacit showed his equipment was working on spec.
Then,
The smell of the ocean! Where had it gone? Billy sniffed but
smelled nothing but stage smoke, something he shouldn't even be able to
do. This was not part of the MIVI algorithms! Had someone hacked the
code, introduced a virus? Or was it a bug, or a fault in the transmission
satellite?
This anomaly concerned him so much that he missed his cue for
"Comfortably Numb". He rarely choked in a performance, and for a split-
nanosecond he was terribly embarrassed. But just as quickly he realized
that his part was in perfect resonance with the band, despite his gaff! He

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looked around and saw no dirty looks from the other musicians, and when
he turned back he was stunned to see Billy Derricks playing bass,
enraptured by the music!
At that moment a door opened in free space (not unusual in virtual
space save that it was in the presence of his doppelganger) and a small,
well-dressed man stepped through and said,
"Good morning, Mr. Derricks, and welcome home!"

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 Chapter 2
Sareena Pradashmatra was very grateful that her parents had
moved her and her three sisters and four brothers out of Calcutta to Hong
Kong. Her ambitious father Amish had barely been able to sustain them in
India working for a small shirt factory, and the family was always wanting
for decent food, clean housing, clothing for the kids--all the things the
government promised but couldn't deliver. The children had worked (or
begged) while her mother tried to get a private software business going,
but the boundless bureaucracy, the endless forms and the suppressive
socialist regulations had made private enterprise all but impossible in
India, now a nation of over 2 billion.
Hong Kong, on the other hand, was a haven for entrepreneurs,
despite its higher costs and limited space. The British had done a
marvelously cagey thing when they returned the city-state to China late in
the last century. Just as a single giggle percolates through a crowd and
swells into booming laughter, this outpost of capitalism spread its message
of aspiration through the New Territories, up the peninsula to the
mainland, where the huge ancient nation got caught up in the profit, pride,
and joy of private enterprise. Old school communism fell without a shot
being fired, and an enormous market opened up for the rest of the world,
Britain included. India alone in the world remained mired in socialism, and
it grew in population while its citizens watched their standard of living
decline. In China on the other hand, the populace learned two valuable
lessons: people are far more efficient and productive when there is personal
responsibility and commensurate reward, and that an affluent population
has less inclination to procreate. Its numbers had stabilized at 1.4 billion in
2011 and were declining to more manageable levels.
Sareena's family had rented two flats up Nathan St. past Kowloon
Park. Both were in a high-rise apartment building, but only one of them
was high up. It served as the primary residence; the other was on the
ground floor and was the de facto office for her mother Prarthana's
burgeoning software business. It also was an overflow bedroom for the two
oldest children, Sareena herself and her slightly younger sister Indu. Indu
was more like her father, who was working as a salesman in one of the
many shops along Nathan St. But Sareena wanted to code like her mother.
And code she did.
Computers had been ubiquitous for almost half a century, and
coding in the older but still functional languages of C++, Python, and Java
was a basic skill taught to elementary students around the world. It was as
if the human genome had incorporated a coding chromosome sometime
since the turn of the century. Not that any serious programming was done
in these older languages. They survived the way ballet or music lessons

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survived, as something for the kids to try to see if they have the knack.
And like ballet and music, most kids didn't have the knack.
But Sareena did. She took to programming at an early age,
mastering her juvenile computer by age five then becoming bored with it.
The family PC was tortured for several years before the Pradashmatra clan
left India and could afford to buy (read: were allowed to buy) a second,
then a third and fourth home computer, as Sareena systematically
deconstructed all the hard-, firm- and software on each new PC. Truth be
told, if it weren't for Sareena's knack, her mother would have had a tougher
time starting her business. Yet the child's constant upgrading, networking
and debugging allowed Mom to concentrate as much on selling code as
writing it.
Sareena did well in school, eschewing the sports and social
activities her siblings found all-important. She was pretty girl with the
traditional long dark straight hair, a thin but developing figure, who was
remarkably uninterested in the fashion and cosmetics girls entering their
teens live for. She was unusually pragmatic about school, seeing it as an
important duty, taking academics for all they were worth, then escaping at
the end of the day to her computers. After her daily maintenance tasks for
her mother she indulged in what she had been living for since her first
exposure nine years earlier: living in the virtual universe of the Net.
When Sareena discovered the Net at age four she was entranced,
staying in her training VR rig for hours, much to the concern of her
parents. Pre-schoolers ordinarily didn’t have this level of concentration.
But as the years passed, and her indulgence in things virtual didn't seem to
hinder her health, social development, or scholastic achievement, they
accepted the fact that their oldest daughter was one of the newest
generation of human, one who could pass from the Real World to the
cybernetic world without batting an eye, yet always keeping them separate
and distinct. Her Net existence provided many opportunities for Sareena to
hone her coding skills, and her online friends were all bright kids whose
parents sometimes turned out to be new customers for Sareena's Mom.
So it was not unusual for Sareena to be romping vicariously
through a distant code library, searching out a routine for her latest hack, as
night slipped into another hot, muggy morning in Hong Kong. It was
Sunday, meaning no school and no housekeeping commitments, so she
could sleep later. Slogging through Gigalines of programming with her
trusty bots, she finally found an old algorithm, originally written in, of all
things COBOL, and cut it into her code. Triumph! But she was too weary
to celebrate.
By now the Sun was up and blazing, even in late September, but
she decided to go offline for a bit and get the harbor air despite the heat.
Had she found her routine earlier, she could have hit the Promenade before

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the mercury passed 30o. No matter, the Central District skyline would be
beautiful, the walkway would be sparsely populated, and she needed to
stretch her legs and her mind.
Sareena threw on a t-shirt, shorts and sandals, slipped quietly out
of the building and ambled down Nathan toward the water. No garish neon
or laser lights: the shops were closed this early on Sunday, but here and
there was a breakfast nook ready for business. The international ambience
of Hong Kong was reinforced in these establishments by the fare: rice,
noodles, and doughnuts. Making a short side-excursion through Kowloon
Park, she passed the swimming pools and crossed a bridge over one of the
ponds; the flamingos were sleeping on one foot, long pink necks curled
back to tuck their heads under their wings, and the turtles and fish hadn't
yet surfaced looking for handouts from tourists.
Sareena turned right after the flamingo pond and climbed some
steep stairs to the top of a small hill. From here she could see northward
the whole shopping district, the community center and the pool, and the
upper floors of her apartment complex. She admired the view for a few
moments, but grew anxious; her all-nighter was beginning to take its toll,
and the young programmer wanted to get in at least a short walk before her
body demanded sleep.
Turning back down the steep stairs Sareena expected to see the
flamingos again, but instead found herself on a path that didn't seem
familiar. She'd practically lived in Kowloon Park these past nine years--it
was one of the few outdoor places open to her. So she was surprised at the
strangeness of this walkway. Chalk it up to exhaustion, she mused; she did
a 180 and climbed back up those stairs. At the top she was startled to see,
not the pool nor her living quarters, but a view southward of the Central
District skyline! How could this be? She'd never seen this sight from this
vantage point; she must be more tired than she thought. And there was no
one around to ask query about this anomaly. Forget the walk by the
harbor; time to get home to bed!
Taking a different descending path Sareena finally landed on a
familiar trail, one that would take her back to the north side of the park.
She was again startled, and beginning to get worried, when this path dead-
ended in the aviary, which should have been on the other side of the
flamingo pond. She turned around and headed back up the trail to the stairs
she had just descended, and found that they led down, not up.
And still no one around; the park was completely deserted, which
was frightfully unusual. Sareena stopped and took a deep breath, then
realized it was the only sound she heard. The morning birds had ceased
their dawn songs. Traffic noises were usually muffled by the trees, masked
by the water sounds, but she heard neither cars nor water. She carefully

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walked down the stairs to find herself at the overlook facing the swimming
pool. It was like being trapped in an Escher painting!
The heat, the climbing, the frustration, and her exhaustion now
conspired against Sareena. The park swirled around her--why hadn't I taken
my phone with me?--and she slumped down against the truck of a Banyan
tree. The relative cool of the shade was intoxicating, soporific, and within
seconds, helpless, she lost consciousness.

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 Chapter 3
The common wisdom was that mathematicians did their best work
in their twenties, then spent the rest of their lives embellishing, almost like
fishermen who recall the big one that didn't get away. James Navell didn't
quite fit this mold. He came to the discipline late in life, for a
mathematician at least (at age twenty-eight), and didn't publish until he was
thirty-one. Princeton admissions had stretched a bit in accepting such an
"elderly" man to the program, but his uncle and cousin had both been
Tigers, and they put pressure on the Registrar on James' behalf. The Math
department was not disappointed. That first paper, evolutionary but not
revolutionary, went further to explain the nature of randomness that any
previous work, and vindicated his stature as the program's oldest junior.
By the time James was in graduate school he had published or co-
published six more papers and had chosen his dissertation subject:
numerical analysis. This he studied furiously to the near-exclusion of
actually finishing his doctorate, but eventually he defended and published a
lengthy but insightful paper on the nature of enormous numbers.
The now Doctor Navell had had the intuitive sense that
mathematics was preoccupied with small numbers, values less than 10100.
Not that this prejudice wasn't somewhat justified; even the number of
particles in the universe was twenty orders less than this arbitrary upper
limit of interesting numbers. The assumption was that larger numbers,
which he dubbed super-valued, didn't really describe anything, and
behaved normally in any event. To James this seemed as if a group of
tadpoles got together and decided that any other body of water was like
their pond, only bigger.
He found it necessary to devise a new system to deal with these
super-valued numbers (even the term "astronomical" was woefully
insufficient to express their magnitude). He invented the concept of
"Exalog" which combined the centuries-old logarithm idea with
microprocessor-based algorithmic numerical methods. Before the Exalog
even the fastest supercomputers would take centuries for simple
calculations with super-valued numbers. But now that this hurdle was
cleared, James began to see that small-value chauvinism had blinded the
mathematics community to many new ideas.
He was neither a Wile nor a Penrose, but even one of the crowd at
the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies was a star anywhere else.
James left New Jersey, turning down a post-doc in favor of an assistant
professor position at the University of Virginia. Here he had been for a
decade, attaining full professorship just last year with the publication of his
fifth paper on super-valued numbers. He was a good teacher, always
willing to help even the lowliest liberal arts student with his liberal arts

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math, lamenting all the while to himself the "emathculation" of education.
He watched wave upon wave of underclassmen struggle through
elementary arithmetic, each year’s group of pupils less capable than the
last. The political changes that had taken place in 2016, freeing many from
the oppressive yoke of an intrusive government, took time to seep down
into education and had yet to liberate youngsters from teachers hired for
reasons other than an ability to teach. (Old school bureaucrats had retreated
but not left the field; James felt that they would never leave). Consequently
even rudimentary critical thinking skills were ignored, and children were
promoted, regardless of achievement, to avoid the stigma of low self-
esteem.
So the mathematics department slowly atrophied as fewer and
fewer students majored in the subject. What kept them alive (as well as
Physics, Chemistry, and other hard sciences) was the notion that
Mathematics, any mathematics, was essential for a well-rounded education.
Many Regents and Trustees openly declared this idea was antiquated;
secretly they disagreed, but they were pressured by local politicians and the
vast innumerate population to dumb down the degree requirements.
Consequently the school offered dozens of sections of trivial
mathematics--arithmetic, pre-algebra, "reform" elementary algebra taught
at a snail's pace, as well as "checkbook mathematics" and the like--while
cutting sections of calculus and differential equations to the bone. Every
semester there were only one, maybe two, upper division advanced topic
seminars for majors, and one graduate seminar. The fact that it now took
majors five years, including summers, to complete an undergraduate
degree discouraged the few budding mathematicians at the school, further
diminishing the department. James coined a phrase, the "preponderance of
the picayune" to describe the situation. There were more than enough
elementary classes to go around, but competition for the seminars was
fierce; most teachers had to content themselves with their research for
intellectual stimulation. Publish or perish didn't seem so harsh, given the
alternative of using your PhD to teach fractions.
Despite the slow decline of academia he was content; here in his
mid-forties he was doing the research he chose, had a secure position with
a good salary and plenty of time off. This he spent giving lectures on
super-valued numbers to MAA conferences around the country. He had an
older but well-kept ranch-style house west of Charlottesville with plenty of
land, vast enough so that neighbors were at a comfortable distance. Not
much for pets, James had acquired a big black cat who had wandered onto
his property one night after losing a fight. Whatever had hurt the feline
must have been big, since Bugger, as James called him, was a sturdy kitty.
James had a vet fix him up, then fed him until the cat was ready to move

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on, which he never did. He adopted James as much as James adopted him,
as is the way of cats.
He had never married; having no desire for children and being a
mathematician seemed to be a double hex on his love life. James deduced
years ago that big biceps and barely restrained sexual aggressiveness were
far more alluring than a big brain. Must have something to do with a
woman's need for a safe and secure nest for her offspring, he guessed. With
only a few hundred chances to procreate during her lifetime, as opposed to
the tens of thousands of opportunities for a man to spread his genes,
finding the right donor, provider and protector was more important to a
woman than finding a man who could do a 4X4 determinant in his head.
Not that he was unattractive. Long and lean, mildly unkempt
brown hair, with a smoother face than his years would indicate, thanks to
the Southard genes. His uncle J. Southard (for whom he was named) had
cleared ninety-five, was still in pretty good shape physically and was in
excellent mental condition, owing to his own life as an academician. James
had a quiet, easy manner, often just sitting and watching the world trickle
by. Unbeknownst to observers who thought he was merely woolgathering,
he usually was engaged in some deep mental adventure, with the grand
parade of life providing enough stress relief for him to maintain
concentration without getting a migraine. James would lounge on his broad
front porch in view of the country road which passed his house, musing
about the consequences of his researches and fantasizing that one day a
woman would just walk right up his driveway and actually like the idea
that he was a bright guy.
And one late September dusk, the kind that whispers that winter
will soon be creeping over the Blue Ridge Mountains, his fantasy actually
happened, though not the way James had ever expected.

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 Chapter 4
Billy stared incredulously at the man. He was late middle-aged,
slightly portly, wearing a tuxedo with a top hat, and in his left hand was a
long cherry cigarette holder with a lighted cigarette.
Billy found his voice and wanted to yell at the interloper "WHO
THE HELL ARE YOU?" but he wasn't certain that the audience wouldn't
pick that up. So instead he whispered in a terse soto voce "who the hell are
you?"
"Mr. Derricks, you should call be Nathan, I think. Yes, Nathan is
a good name. A fine name, a name that speaks volumes without overstating
the obvious," the little gnome of a man said in a small but surprisingly
resonant voice with just a trace of an old British accent.
"OK OK, but what the hell are you doing here? This is a big
concert! I don't care if you can hack into our space, I'm not impressed. Get
the fuck out!"
"Mr. Derricks, no need to use profanity! I have not "hacked" your
concert. Look around, it proceeds normally." Which it did. "I have just
removed you from story, leaving a bookmark, so to speak. And I am here
to present you with an opportunity, one which we hope you will embrace.
But if not, no harm done, and you may rejoin your group."
Billy was calming down. It's difficult to remain blustery when the
object of your wrath is so affable. Besides, his curiosity was getting the
best of him. He looked sideways at the little man.
"What kind of opportunity?"
Nathan looked pleased. He could tell he had hooked the fish. All
that was left was to reel him in.
"You are known to us Mr. Derricks. Oh yes, very well known as a
fine engineer. No, a great engineer, perhaps one of the best living
engineers." A little flattery is always a productive way to start a deal.
"Your human interface devices are most impressive. Most impressive
indeed. They allow one to be almost anywhere one can imagine, without
the constraints of those inconvenient laws of physics and probability.
Pesky they are, those laws."
Billy looked around self-consciously. “The Wall” was proceeding
well with one Billy Derricks rapt in his bass playing. The other Billy was
talking to a nutball.
"I represent a group embarking on a great and important project,
an adventure, one with a considerable backing from, ah, anonymous
capital. This project, if successful, will alter the nature of virtual reality and
all other realities as well." Now Billy knew he was talking to a nutball.
"The team we are assembling is a small one, only four others
besides myself. We will have a theoretician, a software engineer, a

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hardware engineer--hopefully you Mr. Derricks--and a pilot. I will be
acting as coordinator."
Nutcase he may be, but Nathan had that way of talking that drew
you in, like a carnival barker or a snake-oil salesman. "Now we know you
have a commitment to the GameChamp Corporation; we are prepared to
offer them a considerable sum to borrow you for about twelve months, or
even buy out your contract. Your salary would be generous, but your real
reward will come from the fruits of this project."
"Just what are you building, anyway?" Billy asked.
"A way out, Mr. Derricks. A way out. For security reasons, I
cannot reveal the details here. This is not a secure space. But if you will
accompany me, we will meet shortly with the other members of the team
for breakfast. Over a fine meal I will explain fully. Do not worry, Mr.
Derricks. If you decide not to join us you us you merely have to sign a
non-disclosure agreement and we will return you to your performance."
The truth is, Billy was getting bored with designing cerebral
interfaces for GameChamp. He had been there, he had done that, he was
over it. Nathan was weird, but you couldn't deny his technology. The little
man had entered the virtual Royal Albert Hall and pulled him aside,
replacing him with an avatar without missing a note. And somehow he had
removed any evidence of the beach Billy was sitting on. He didn't feel
hungry or tired even though it must be almost noon.
"OK, Nathan. I'll listen to your plan. I guess you're nearby. It'll
take me a few minutes to power down this rig..."
"Not necessary, Mr. Derricks," Nathan flicked his cigarette holder
into thin air where it vanished; pop! With a wide grin he said, "I am
delighted that you will join our little repast. Delighted! But it is not
necessary to remove your equipment. Just follow me." The door on the
stage opened again. Looking through it Billy saw a pier with a little
restaurant at the end. How filling can a virtual breakfast be anyway? he
thought. I'll have to get something real to eat later. Ah, what the hell!
"Lead on, D'artangnon, lead on."

- 14 -
 Chapter 5
How many lives can one live in four score and ten, Kathryn
wondered. Barely thirty-one years old, here she was finishing up another
twist of her mortal coils, her fourth. First, student-actress; next, dancer,
ostensibly; up until recently, kept woman; now, what? pornographic
puppeteer?
How, as a little girl. she wanted to be a movie star! Her earliest
recollections were of the little dramas she put on for her family. Later she
had pushed her way into the lead of every school play, deservedly so. The
whole small Chicago suburb came out to watch the precocious little blond
girl play everything from Cinderella to Mary Poppins. “That girl's got real
talent,” they all said.
Her bedroom had been adorned with one-sheets of her favorite
actresses: Kim Catrall, Christina Ricci, Joan Greenwood, Audrey Hepburn,
Jodie Foster--"Contact" had been her all-time favorite film. She had been
the archetypal drama-club girl in high school, and when it came time to go
to college, her parents withdrew half their retirement funds to send Kathryn
to USC.
What followed was too much the hackneyed small-town girl in
the big city cliché, almost too maudlin to bear. Yet stereotypes don't spring
into existence from nothing; they follow a well-worn path because many
had walked it before. Kathryn found that USC and LA were very
expensive, much more than she anticipated despite the grants and
scholarships. She shared a large house in Watts with several other film
students, but despite every effort at frugality she could not make ends
meet. And she couldn't ask her folks for more money, she just couldn't!
Kathryn was determined to finish school, so for extra money she served
drinks at a local college bar. She quickly found that tips from students were
few and niggardly; it couldn't be otherwise since she and her customers
were in the same situation. Soon Kathryn found herself serving at a
"gentleman's club" in Pasadena, where the gentlemen were few but the tips
were forthcoming and much more generous. The management recognized
her natural talent (read: trim, curvaceous figure) and goaded her into
working the stage. She had never been shy about her body, and it wasn't
completely nude dancing, and there was no sex involved; Kathryn looked
upon this "promotion" as merely a role to play, one that her suburbanite,
nominally Christian parents would never discover.
After a time she was seduced, not by management, but by money.
For two years she had tried to get even a bit part in a B movie to no avail,
all the while making good grades at school with good notes on her
performances. Concurrently the money was rolling in from her dancing;
she found she could pay for her junior year tuition without hitting up her

- 15 -
folks again. This was a slight problem, as her parents would be very
suspicious about a part-time job that was paying her $40K a year. So she
put the funds aside, resolving to pay her folks back when it was discreet to
do so.
It was in the beginning of her third year at USC, while dancing,
that she met Leon. He was a grandfatherly figure who had recently started
frequenting her "gentleman's club", but in his case Leon actually was a
gentleman, and he always tipped her outrageously. Eventually they became
friends; Leon was at that advanced age when memories were more
practical than actions, and was wistfully aware of that fact, so Kathryn felt
at ease. He had spent his life amassing a tidy fortune, and was spending it
prodigiously to avoid leaving it to his only and slacker son. Leon was
entranced by her dancing, but at the same time he thought it was
demeaning, although she didn't see it that way. Yet he always found her
company even more enchanting, so one night he offered to give her an
allowance equal to her income at the club, and to set her up in her own
suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel where he lived, if she would quit dancing
and be his escort. She could finish school and pursue her acting career; he
just wanted her company.
This was more than acceptable to Kathryn--a free ride, security, a
chance to concentrate on real acting--but what to tell the folks back home?
She eventually worked it out; she'd keep her school mailing address until
she graduated, then would professedly get a series of advances for parts in
non-existent films which would ostensibly fail to be released, a typical fate
for many small productions in Hollywood. That is, until a real part came
along. This way she could pay her folks back, relating a measure of
success to justify the sacrifices they had made, all the time working
towards her true goal.
However, as the years slipped by, and real parts weren't
forthcoming while Leon's money and gifts continued to flow, Kathryn saw
her true goal receding into the background. Life became one junket, one
cruise, one trip abroad after another. Unearned wealth and the beguiling
security it brings is a drug, as potent and addictive as any narcotic. The
March-December couple went to the best restaurants, had the best seats at
SRO shows, wore the best clothes and jewelry. For ten years she lived the
high life, celibate but lacking in nothing else, except perhaps self-esteem.
Then the money ran out; Leon had lived longer than he had
calculated. Savings evaporated, the furs and other gifts migrated one-by-
one to the pawnshops for maintenance money. The Beverly Hills Hotel,
out of tradition and some measure of mercy, allowed them to keep one,
smaller, suite. This went on for a year, when Leon's calculations caught up
with him.

- 16 -
 Kathryn had buried her benefactor this time last year. It was a sad
thing, as few attended the services. He left her a small endowment, but his
derelict son litigated and won most of it. The Hotel no longer could justify
her rooms and gently evicted her. Now here she was, renting a garage
apartment in Studio City, living her fourth life.
Cybersex had been around since the beginning of
www.anydamnedthing.com. Likely even the early ARPA netizans were
surreptitiously sending lurid stories and innuendos to each other at 300
baud back in the '70s. GUI technology enhanced the low-bandwidth
fantasies but still fell short. Static pictures, stop-motion video, and one-
hand typing didn't create exactly the greatest erotic experience, but any sex
was better than no sex at all. Around the turn of the century some clever
souls had designed peripherals to expand the interactivity between
cybersexual partners. These IEEE add-ons lessened the need for, shall we
say, self-actuation? However, only the most imaginative (or lonely)
computer user saw this as an adequate substitute for coitus. By the time of
Leon's death the total immersion capabilities of the Net, coupled with
improved peripherals, had made NetSex, as it was now called, a passable
experience. As with all things, affluence brings more options. Of course,
the world's oldest profession was still extraordinarily profitable, but there
were those who desired total anonymity, and could afford it. For them, at
the price of a boat or other recreational vehicle, there was Body Double.
Back in the day inflatable vinyl sex dolls had been available to the
average Joe or occasional Josephine for half a week's salary; these
provided a barely adequate illusion of intimacy and the surrogate begged
for improvement. Anatomically correct life dolls were invented in the '90s,
these costing about a month's salary. Decades of intense research and
modern innovations matured the life doll considerably; not only did the
new Body Double mimic the features, the "look and feel" of a real human,
it contained a series of motors, pumps, and actuators in key places that
could be remotely controlled, from across the room or across the Net. And
it was biologically inert and completely washable. But most importantly,
not only did the doll have a degree of autometry, it produced telemetry for
the remote controller.
NetSex had come into the twenty-first century. For a considerable
amount of money the lonely netizan with his or her Body Double could
logon to a virtual brothel where a virtual prostitute (euphemistically called
an Ecstasy Guide) would don a body suit with the appropriate force-
feedback controllers that read the Body Double's telemetry. Here was
finally, as the old song went, sex without touching. Very expensive, but
sex at any price was better than no sex at all.
Being such a guide is what Kathryn found herself doing, at age
thirty-one with a fine arts degree but no money and no prospects. She

- 17 -
found this position through her landlord in Studio City, another USC film
school grad now working as a fish salesman at the Farmer's Market. The
company was called Exxxtasy VR (EVR) and the job was advertised to her
as a sterile, dispassionate experience; she would just be working a puppet,
and, desperate as she was, this didn't seem too bad, at first.
Kathryn could work from home, renting (with an option to buy)
the force-feedback body suit, and taking her clients from the EVR site. She
never met her clients in the flesh, so to speak, but she saw them, or rather
their avatars, through her VR gear in cyberspace. Her appearance to the
client was never her real self; it was an image either provided by the client
(which for privacy's sake she was not allowed to download) or from the
company's library of celebrity and generic models. And her POV could be
from the Body Double or that of the evening's persona.
Interestingly, these fantasies had her drawing from her theatre arts
degree, and although the plots were pretty much the same, Kathryn
discovered that her images were the ultimate make-up for whatever role
she was playing. She could be old, young, any race or body type, unknown
or famous; she even played several men. Once an especially eccentric
female client had a custom built Body Double at enormous expense, and
Kathryn was fitted for a special feedback suit; that time, in an historical re-
enactment, she played a large horse. Although she was paid quite well,
almost two months of regular wages, the experience was too unnerving for
her to repeat.
After a year of working for EVR she had gotten herself
completely out of debt, put away a nice sum of cash, and had resumed
sending her mother some money every month. Her father had died
suddenly several years before Leon and she still missed him terribly. The
loss of the two older men in her life had had a lasting effect on Kathryn
and was in part responsible for her acceptance of a job where she had a
measure of control, which she did as an Exxxtasy guide.
However, she was tiring of the unvarying roles. Moreover, she
was beginning to feel weighed down by her clients. The job had been
advertised as dispassionate and sterile, but week after week she was
interacting with lonely people, men mostly, who had no one to talk to, no
one to share a life with. You can't be human and be completely detached,
completely unaffected by the constant parade of lifeless avatars.
So with a tidy nest egg she decided to take some time off. She
gave notice to EVR, which they sadly accepted; her training as an actress
had made Kathryn a real moneymaker for them. Her boss made it clear that
her job would always be there for her. Contrary to the popular opinion that
dealers in the virtual sex trade were hard-nosed thugs and losers, her
managers at EVR were genuinely sorry to see her go. They gave her a
lavish party, a healthy parting bonus, and many hugs in the week before

- 18 -
her extended vacation. On her last day she was treated to a sumptuous
lunch at an exclusive Arabian restaurant in Hollywood. Kathryn still had
one more client later on, but after that she was free.
Late that night she donned her feedback suit for one last session,
one last lonely man. Tonight she was playing a youngish Asian girl, a girl
who hadn't grown up on an American diet, so she was pretty but had the
historically thin, almost prepubescent, Asian figure. Kathryn had been
practicing her giggle and her shy, deferential voice since lunch; the VR
would take care of the accent and could even translate on demand.
Typically the clients who requested this image were intelligent but
unconfident men who needed to feel the control that they normally lack in
dealings with women. Sad to say tonight’s image was a popular model. To
them the courteous Asian lady was someone they could dominate with no
fear of resistance or contradiction. They were not rough but clumsy from
lack of experience. Sometimes all they wanted was to have a woman to
talk to and to hold onto; in a way they were the most pathetic of all her
customers and affected her the most.
Tonight she was playing out a scenario where the client, another
LA resident, would find her sitting alone in a city park, as lonely as he was
in reality, and at first glance would be completely taken with him. The
illusion of animal magnetism figured prominently in this fantasy. Kathryn
powered up the feedback unit for her last foray, until the money ran out at
least, and found herself in a bright tropical park near a pond, tall buildings
visible over the trees. There were a few other people around, but they were
window dressing--tonight's client requested a one-on-one experience. He
had not yet entered the virtual space.
She was dressed in a traditional Chinese business suit, long skirt,
heels, wearing sunglasses. Although the Body Double was not ambulatory
the simulation allowed for the illusion of mobility in the space; once
physical contact was required her movements were constrained by the
capabilities of the simulacrum. When, after waiting for a few minutes, her
client didn't show, she decided to move around virtual park a bit; perhaps
he was sitting in another area.
This simulation is really good, she thought to herself. She could
almost feel the heat of the early morning sun on her face, and suddenly,
amazingly, she began to perspire! The power of suggestion was getting the
best of her. And was that cut grass she smelled? Too much! Kathryn had
heard of the self-hypnotic trance some netizans fell into; to be safe she
decided to return to her original position, lest the client get annoyed in her
absence. Besides, this last assignment was getting too real, and she needed
to re-establish command of the VR.
Much to her surprise retracing her steps didn't return her to the
bench. Some kind of bug in the interface? she thought. Concerned, she

- 19 -
attempted to remove the headset she was wearing back in her room, and
felt a wave of panic when she found all she managed to do was to remove
her virtual sunglasses. The Sun was blinding! This shouldn't happen--the
program should compensate for the simulated luminosity change through
the ocular interface. Frantically she clawed at what she assumed was the
feedback suit, only to find she was merely wrinkling her silk business
jacket.
Was this last client some kind of code cracker who had hacked the
simulation to get at her? Why? She had no enemies. Then, panic; Kathryn
had heard about working girls in the real world who get hired by sickos;
was this a virtual equivalent? She looked around for some clue, but found
no one else in the space, not even the window dressing.
She chose to take the unfamiliar path regardless of where it led.
Perhaps the man responsible was somewhere hidden, guiding her to him.
Determined not to give in to fear--what physical harm could come to her in
virtual space?--she walked briskly around to some stairs that she ascended
to find a young Indian girl fast asleep under a Banyan tree.

- 20 -
 Chapter 6
It was on that late September evening that Bugger nearly
emasculated James. He was sitting on his owner's lap--both were snoozing
in the hammock on the front porch--when something startled the cat and he
leapt up with a hiss. Fortunately Bugger was a thoughtful kitty and didn't
land back down on James with his claws out. The human, deep in a dream,
awoke in total disorientation. His first reaction was alarm that rapidly
faded to anger at the cat for the early rousing. Quickly though he perceived
what had turned Bugger into a projectile.
Standing over him was the silhouette of a woman, backlit by the
waning daylight. She was dark-skinned so all that he could make out was a
Cheshire Cat smile of perfect teeth. She had been reaching out toward him
but was drawing back as Bugger shot off. James reached over and turned
on the porch light. As his eyes adjusted to the weak glow from the yellow
buglight he saw that the beauty of this creature was phenomenal. Tall,
exotic, shapely, with the perfect face of a DaVinci, crowned by a mane of
long black hair, she spoke in a sexy contralto.
"Good evening James, Bugger" said the woman, bending down to
pet the cat whose curiosity had bested his fear. "My name in Natalie, and
I'm so sorry to have startled you."
James was at a loss. Nobody ever came out this way; he had not
had a visitor for years, much less a woman who looked like she stepped
right out of the Kama Sutra. And a woman who apparently knew him, or at
least of him.
"You have me at a disadvantage, Ma'am," he said. "I wasn't
expecting anyone." He glanced at the unmarked custom van in his
driveway. Must be electric to have driven up without a sound. Not from the
school, he thought, nor a delivery or messenger service. "Not much reason
for personal visits anymore, what with VR conference calls and the like."
The woman's smile faded a bit, and James knew he had inserted
his foot deep into his mouth. "Ah, but I'm pleased and honored that you
drove all the way out here just to see me in person. What can I do for you?
May I get you something?"
Natalie's eyes twinkled knowingly. She had an intrinsic sense of
how small changes in her countenance could work large changes on a male
in attendance. "Please, I would like to sit," she said, looking around for a
seat other than the hammock. Somewhat embarrassed by the paucity of
porch furniture, James went inside and brought out two webbed lawn
chairs; almost brand-new for lack of use, whereas his hammock was well
worn. "As for what can you do for me, we'll talk about that after a time. I
have a proposition I think you'll find of interest. First, though, tell me, how
are you doing? I know you've been teaching at UVa these past ten years,

- 21 -
researching, publishing, and doing the mathematics lecture circuit.
Fulfilling to be sure, but I want to hear your take on this life of academia
you've chosen."
Odd, he thought. Why would a complete stranger want to know
how I’m doing? He would have remembered any encounter with this
stunningly attractive woman, but his memory called up nothing. Yet there
was something about the cadence of her speech, her choice of words, that
rendered her less a stranger and more like a long-lost relative whom he had
just met at a reunion.
The evening had quickly decayed into night, and out at James'
house the darkness was pretty imposing. There in the 40W yellow light he
opened up to this woman with more candor and comfort than he would
have anticipated. He spoke of the sad state of education, the dwindling
numbers of students who would or could master anything beyond the
trivial, and the growing boredom he felt with academia. Natalie listened
closely, genuinely interested in his present emotional and intellectual state.
At a natural pause in his monologue he got up at lit some Tiki Torches
stuck in the ground around his front porch. Incongruous in the Virginia
hills, they were somehow fitting for a conversation with this exotic
woman.
James never mentioned his fantasy that someday a woman would
walk up his driveway and like him for his mind, and he dared not believe
that Natalie was that woman. In that language of the unspoken, his solo
status was presented and discussed without ever putting words to the
feelings. Natalie knew these things, the way a parent knows when a child is
troubled by something unvoiced. She did not pry, however, and presently
James ended his monologue. An hour had passed, much to his amazement.
Natalie stood up and stretched, every contour and curve
accentuated by her extensions. James tried not to notice too much, but
nothing Natalie did was without forethought of its consequences. This was
not an invitation; it was a prelude to her proposal. She sat down.
"Well, James, forgive me for being bold, but I think you could use
a change. A real change. Now, I happen to know the Chancellor at UVa.
We go way back." (James didn't know how this young woman and the
senior Chancellor could go back any more than a few years.) "If I could
arrange for him to grant you a sabbatical without all that annoying
paperwork, would you be interested in a different kind of research project?
Something of vital importance, not just academic curiosity?"
"What kind of research?"
"That, I'm afraid, it difficult to explain quickly. I'm giving a talk
to the other prospective members of our team shortly. Besides, I'm getting
hungry. If you wouldn't mind coming with me for a while...?"

- 22 -
 They were many miles from any place a scientific research team
might meet. The school was the closest place, and at this late hour it, and
all of Charlottesville, would be closed. Natalie sensed his puzzlement.
"It will be a virtual meeting" she said, without waiting for his
confirmation, "Here, put this on." She produced a compact VR headset
from no place James could see. He looked through the transparent
eyescreen at Natalie; she was pointing a remote control at her van, which
had started to hum.
There, halfway up the driveway in front of the van, a bright
rainbow-hued light was growing, apparently out of nowhere. Stage lights
without a stage. James could see an ocean scene coalescing in the center of
the light. Limited in VR experience to conference calls, he was fascinated
by this apparition, and he realized he was about to be led by his curiosity
and this beautiful, persuasive, confident woman to someplace very
interesting.
"Come on James. Time is shorter than you think."

- 23 -
 Chapter 7
The separation between me and my avatar is blurring, thought
Kathryn as she stood over the sleeping girl in Kowloon Park. She had been
winded by the climb up to this vantage point, her feet hurt from the high
heels she was allegedly wearing, and she was still perspiring under the
increasingly hot sun and humid air. This can't be happening; I have been
on over a hundred calls for EVR and I've never broken a sweat, never been
sore, and always been able to shut the system down. Something is terribly
wrong, she knew, and she was beginning to get worried.
She looked down at the pretty, slender Indian girl: just a kid. The
girl didn't have that pixelized image that the window dressing has; maybe
someone else is in here with me. Kathryn decided to wake her with a
gentle shake of her shoulders. The girl started and sat up quickly but
relaxed when she saw the young Asian woman in the smart business suit.
"Sorry I startle you, but there doesn't seem to be anyone else in
here already," said Kathryn in English with her Cantonese accent still
activated. Somehow this was more annoying than the strange body she was
apparently wearing.
"That's OK ma'am. I'm glad someone else is here. The park
seemed deserted and I was getting nervous. I wonder how long I've been
asleep; do you know what time it is? Oh, sorry, my name is Sareena
Pradashmatra."
"Please to meet you, Sareena. My name is Kathryn Merrill. I don't
know what time it is in here. I plugged around 11PM, LA time already."
Damn that accent! "I'm sorry my English is too no good--the accent
algorithm is in lock."
"What do you mean, accent algorithm? This can't be a virtual
space--I turned off my rig and came out here hours ago."
Kathryn was mildly stunned by what this child was saying.
Further weirdness on top of her already strange odyssey. On an impulse
she reached out and gently touched the child. She was warm from the sun,
and smelled a bit of juvenile sweat.
How could this be happening to her? She was a 30-something
white woman who was supposed to be meeting her last client for some
NetSex. The locale was his choosing; could it be that was he pretending to
be the little Indian girl? It wouldn't be the first time some guy's alter ego
was manifested this way. Was some weird fantasy of his? He'd have to be
one hell of an engineer to alter her feedback to this extent. Every human
sensory input was fully functional; no suit could do this, she was sure of
that. And she had no way of turning the telemetry off.
She needed a way of testing this girl apparition. On the off chance
that she really was a young teenager, Kathryn didn't want to reveal her

- 24 -
occupation to her; it just wouldn't be appropriate. On the other hand, any
hacker this good would be able to foil most tests. The laws of physics
didn't necessarily have to hold, and apparently all the senses could be
fooled. What else is there?
Some way to stress the telemetry? Kathryn knew that the data
carrying capabilities of the Net weren't infinite. The bandwidth
requirements for smooth motion, virtual scenery, and 3D sound were
enormous, not counting this additional telemetry. Even if some hacker had
managed to fool her body into thinking she really was an Asian woman in
a city park, if she pushed the system, maybe she'd see a flicker in the
background or hear a stutter in the audio.
Running ought to do it, she thought. Rapidly changing scenery,
plus the simulation of her panting, heart pounding and sweating should
push the pipe to the limit, and something would give. She took off her
high-heels and handed them to the incredulous teen-ager, "please hold
these please, I must try something," and Kathryn took off running as best
she could in the business suit. She ran back down the stairs she had
ascended minutes ago and found herself on a broad street. This was a jolt
as she hadn't seen been on any street earlier. No matter, she ran along the
sidewalk down a slight incline, all the time observing the scenery up close
and in the distance. The park was on her right, and shops were across the
street. There were a few people out and about, and a few gave her a
quizzical look, but nobody said anything. More importantly, nobody
flickered. She brushed against a man who was a solid as she. When a path
back into the park came up she took in and ran down and around a small
knoll and, exhausted by the heat and the exertion, she almost ran into
Sareena who was looking the other way down the stairs Kathryn had just
used.
"ooooofff," grunted Kathryn as she bumped into the Indian girl
and collapsed onto the grass under the Banyan tree. "Where did you go?"
asked Sareena, "I lost sight of you as you ran around that corner down
there.
Kathryn was soaked with perspiration and heaving to catch her
breath. "I...came...to a....street....Ran down...don't understand...how I get up
here already." Her little experiment had failed to prove that some hacker
had taken control of her feedback suit and had only served to make her
sweaty, more frustrated, and a little more scared. This result meant either a)
someone had such complete control over the situation, such advanced
technology, that this virtual space was indistinguishable from real space or
b) she somehow had become a young Asian woman. Either possibility was
just too surreal.
"There is a simple explanation," said a familiar sounding voice.
"You two are in a Mobius Space which loops from real to virtual space."

- 25 -
 Sareena turned to face the attractive blond American woman who
had just spoken. Kathryn just stared in shock. The blond woman was her,
or at least the body she thought was hers. The original Kathryn Merrill.
She was still too winded and too dumbfounded to speak, but Sareena knew
no better, so she asked, "A Mobius Space? Like a four-dimensional
manifold? I saw an article about that on the net, but I didn't understand the
mathematics."
"That's understandable. It involves the Sestini conjecture based on
Navell's super-valued probability theorem. I have a tough time with it
myself. But the physics are workable, and it has as much to do with
evolution as with any mathematics. Both of you have unconsciously taken
the first steps into the Greater World, a hint of evolutionary changes to
come." The Kathryn body looked at Asian Kathryn. "Where are my
manners? Please call me Jamie. And I'm sorry about shocking you this way
Kathryn. I thought a familiar face would be comforting. I've never been a
real people person, and I've miscalculated. But it was necessary to remind
you of who you are."
The blond woman shook herself and suddenly became someone
else. Still a pretty young woman, but taller, about 5'10", long brown hair,
curvy but not voluptuous, of Northern European extraction and dressed in a
white peasant blouse, jeans, and clunky hiking boots. Now it was Sareena's
turn to be surprised. "And I apologize now shocking you, my young Indian
friend. Now if you will permit me, I'll lead you out of this loop to meet
some other confused but very interesting people. It's quite important that
you attend."
With that a door opened in the middle of the path and Jamie
stepped through beckoning the now thoroughly confused two young
women.

- 26 -
 Chapter 8
Jamie preceded Sareena and Kathryn through the door into a
small restaurant at the end of a pier. It was early morning on the ocean,
Pacific judging from where the Sun was rising. Big Band music played
softly in the background. The restaurant, a diner really, was quiet with only
a single waitress greeting and seating them in a large booth with two
others, a young black man wearing biking-leathers and a middle-aged but
youthful-appearing white man, casually dressed.
Kathryn felt a mild tingle as she crossed the threshold into the
diner. At first she thought it was too much air-conditioning after her heated
condition, but then joyously realized that she was her old self again, not the
Asian business woman. Her relief was visible to the group.
Jamie sat at the head of the booth on a chair turned around,
leaning on the back in a masculine fashion. She looked at the two men.
"Gentlemen, I'm pleased to introduce Kathryn and Sareena. Ladies, this is
Billy and over here, James. Nathan and Natalie won't be joining us, at least
not in the flesh. My name is Jamie and the truth is, I am their flesh.
Kathryn can explain." She turned to look at the now-blonde woman.
"Who me? No, sorry, I can't really. I just spent the last few hours
as someone else, and I'm more confused that I can say. But I'm glad to be
me again."
Above James a light bulb flashed on. "Oh, I get it. You, Jamie, are
also Natalie and someone named Nathan. Now the question is, is this the
real you? Not that I believe any of this is really happening.” Is it always
like this in NetSpace? he thought.
"Bingo! And yes, this is me now, and it is happening," said Jamie.
She looked at James with a curious affection. Not any kind of sexual
attraction; more like an aunt, though she was much too young to be a
sibling to either of his parents. But she did look vaguely familiar--a picture
he had seen at his uncle's house? "Just a bit of legerdemain--I like to have a
little fun too you know--although Kathryn was truly concerned about her
condition. I had little to do with it actually. She was an Asian woman in a
Kowloon park; she had unconsciously fit herself to the situation. I just
happened by to invite her and Sareena here, and the change of venue to
here allowed her the freedom to reclaim her old self."
The more Jamie talked, the more incredulously the four others
looked at her. "Now is the time for explanations I think. Give me some
time, the story is as convoluted as Mobius Space itself." She leaned back
and fell into a well-practiced lecture mode, squelching the group’s
curiosity at her use of the term Mobius Space.
"Every species evolves in fits and starts. There is no great internal
consensus that says 'OK evolve'. Some traits change slowly, like the 3%

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loss in dentition humans undergo every ten centuries, across almost the
whole population. On the other hand, certain extreme changes can occur
quickly in a very small fraction of the population. Of course, if these
mutations are detrimental the change stops before the next generation. But
if the alteration proves to be beneficial, leaving the individual more
capable of adapting to its environment, well, things can take off."
The four at the table looked at each other as their host paused. The
last thing any of them had expected was a lecture on genetics and
evolution. James had a rudimentary knowledge of Mendelian probabilities,
but beyond that he and the others were lost. Jamie sensed this and started
on a different tack.
"Do you remember from your history lessons the attitude people
had in the early scientific-industrial revolution? The disbelief of what even
"learned" men saw when looked through Galileo's telescope? The Catholic
Church burning Giordano Bruno at the stake for adhering to a heliocentric
solar system model? Remember learning about the Luddites destroying
machinery? Science and technology were just too, too much for these
people to grasp."
"Remember the attitude most people had about early steam trains?
'No one can breathe at over 35 miles per hour'. It was only common sense
to believe that. But then the trains ran at 40, 50, 70 miles an hour and
nobody thought twice about it. Common sense had changed. 'Man was not
meant to fly' but then he did at Kitty Hawk and no one denied it. Common
sense had changed again. In actual fact, the nature of reality was
changing."
Jamie caught a deep breath, then continued as her audience
listened, enraptured. "As science and technology progressed from that
beach in North Carolina, from the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School, and
from the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, fewer and fewer
everyday people could really understand what was going on. Relativity and
quantum mechanics are not products of common sense, and the
mathematical abstractions that made the twentieth century work were just
too sophisticated for most people. But they didn't care. Everything
functioned as advertised, and the now massively increasing population
contented themselves with enjoying the magic from the laboratories.
Magic, yes, for 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic', to quote a famous scientist/author. What had really happened,
without anyone realizing it until recently, was that mankind had turned an
evolutionary corner, one that we are just beginning to comprehend."
"Chaucer had his "EveryMan", and we believe he was closer to
the truth than he thought, though he probably was not an EveryMan. The
largest fraction of humans is indeed EveryMan and EveryWoman, unable
to conceive of anything beyond common sense: no ability to think

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symbolically (save for iconic representations), no understanding beyond
their own senses. Literally, they could never, regardless of any amount of
study or training, get beyond the common wisdom."
"Newton was the one who quantified common sense. EveryMan
could feel acceleration--it made sense. EveryWoman could understand
kinematics--rate multiplied by time equals distance. Sensible. With
education and perseverance EveryBody could get a sense of simple
mechanics. But Lorentz transformations? Probability waves? ‘How could
things that make no sense at work at all’, they thought. How can time
change as you go faster? How can an electron go through two slits at the
same time? ‘Just some fool scientist-speak’, they concluded, not reality,
not common sense."
Again Jamie paused to take stock of her class. Everyone at the
table was right with her. Now for the big kicker.
"The truth is, you can't travel at 35 miles per hour and live. You
would suffocate."
The table stared at her for a beat, then broke up in nervous
chuckles. "You can't have hijacked us to your virtual restaurant..." started
Billy, then stopped. He had been sipping coffee, real coffee. His MIVI
interface couldn't do that. Now he understood what Sareena and Kathryn
had just gone through. The laughter died down.
"Until someone conceived of it, travel at 35mph was impossible.
Until someone conceived of it, heavier-then-air flight was impossible.
Until someone conceived of it, relativity, quantum gravity, string theory
were all impossible. The conception erased the impossibility and created
the possibility."
"Ayn Rand and the objectivists were correct, to a point. There is a
Real World out there, separate from the senses and uniform in properties
laid down by Newton. But there is a Greater World that exists because a
tiny fraction of humanity can conceive of it. Have you ever wondered why,
when a scientist or scientific team devises some apparatus to prove a
particular notion, that the apparatus detects evidence of that notion? Think
of quarks..."
"Wait," cried Kathryn, "What the hell--sorry-- what is a quark?"
"It is simply a fundamental piece of matter. Murray Gel-Mann
envisioned everything--protons, neutrons, electrons, everything-- as being
made up of six quarks, each of which came in three colors. The names and
colors are just nicknames, not real indications of any quality. The details
aren't important now."
"When they built accelerators to search for quarks, guess what
they found? When they built WIMP detectors--" more chuckles from
Sareena, Billy and Kathryn, relaxed chuckles this time, "--they found them.
Neutrino detectors? Yep, found those too."

- 29 -
 "There have been, we guess, people since the last Ice Age who
could have conceived of these things, but not many. A small fraction of the
population had manifested that drastic evolutionary change I talked about
earlier, and the percentage who had this mutation remained fairly constant
over the millennia. Because human numbers remained small until the
beginning of the last century, advanced and uncommon sense ideas were
not, could not be part of reality. But since 1900 our world population has
grown drastically, and that small fraction came to represent large numbers.
Numbers sufficient to support a Greater World, as we call it. Now when a
scientific team looks for a particle or force it is found because they create
it by conceiving of its existence!"
"Excuse me," Sareena said, raising her hand. Everyone smiled,
especially James, who was sitting next to her. She had been quiet all during
Jamie's lecture; she was, after all, a young teenager sitting in on an adult
discussion. She paused, looking for approval from the others, found it, and
asked, "You mean it's like in Peter Pan, when you just have to believe in
Tinkerbell and she'll live?"
"A very astute observation Sareena," said Jamie, "but it's more
than that. Most people believe the laser guidance system on their car will
work, but they can't understand why it works. Metastable states of
electrons in a Helium-Neon mixture of gases is quite beyond them. No,
lasers work, tunnel diodes work, gravitational lensing works because there
are now enough people who do understand how they work, and their
understanding changes reality. The first clue that something extraordinary
was happening was that common sense changed rapidly in the 19th century
and left the realm of mass comprehension in the 20th. Now in the 21st
there is a Greater World of which the common sense reality of the Real
World is a subset." Jamie again inhaled deeply. "Hey, I’m still getting used
to the idea myself. How are you all doing?"
Sareena sat quietly, pressed against the red vinyl cushions of the
booth. She was still a bit shy in this company of adults and had spent most
of the time listening and looking at James, who was now lost in thought.
Jamie's revelation was something he had never considered, but given the
data, his recent bizarre experiences, and the consistency of her reasoning
she could very well be correct. It implied endless possibilities, given
enough people who could envision those possibilities. Which, of course,
meant huge probabilities, huge numbers, super-valued numbers!
Kathryn too was silent, but for a different reason. All her life he
had been involved with theatre arts. True, her years with Leon were not
artistically productive, but recently she had returned to it, after a fashion.
However, she had never been exposed to such radical ideas, never had any
serious training in any science at all. Why was she here with these
obviously technically minded people?

- 30 -
 Billy was getting impatient, typical of his nature. He sensed a
punchline to this story, a plot twist, something, and he hated to wait. "All
right Jamie, what you're sayin' makes some sense in a wild kinda way.
What else? Where is all this leading? And what is Mobius Space?"
Jamie got up and stretched, motioning to the waitress for another
soda. She had not joined the other adults in their coffee fix. "Later on the
Mobius lecture. Where is this all leading? Right now, the Greater World is
a non-contiguous patchwork; a bit of quantum gravity here, some
molecular biophysics there. The Mentors—that’s what we’ll call those who
are pushing this world forward--aren't yet in sufficient numbers to unify
the patches. Even though world populations are growing rapidly,
dysgenesis is taking its toll. For every potential Mentor child EveryMan
and EveryWoman have four offspring. But soon, perhaps within fifty
years, there will be enough of us to unite the patches into a quilt of greater
reality. From then on there will be two distinct branches of the human
tree."
"There is precedent for multiple branches of humanity stemming
from intellectual differences. Cro-Magnon out of Africa, by virtue of his
use of body ornamentation, displayed the superior cognitive ability of
expressing abstract ideas--tribal stature, for example--through symbolism.
Neanderthals mimicked this behavior but apparently didn't grasp the
meanings of the necklaces and bracelets he saw Cro-Magnon wear. While
most evolutionary change occurs because of environmental factors, in this
case the advantage of superior cognitive powers allowed the African
branch to adapt to those changes, to survive the Ice Ages, whereas
Neanderthal retreated and died out."
"There is no evidence of violent competition between those
ancient humans, and while the potential for social conflict in our future is
there, we anticipate little difficulty. Once we attain those numbers, that
critical mass, we can maintain, with little effort, the Real World for our
cousins on the other evolutionary branch while we ourselves move out into
the Greater World. We will be able to provide for their needs and protect
them from catastrophes, either external in origin or self-inflicted."
She looked out the restaurant window at the sea beyond. Then,
almost to herself, she said, "But we may not have the time."

- 31 -
 Chapter 9
The group waited quietly in anticipation of Jamie's next words.
Her voice had grown less professorial in the last few minutes and more
worried. She stood up and paced back and forth for maybe a minute.
Finally she stopped before her guests. "Perhaps you caught wind of a small
story the popular news has been misinforming us of in the past month.
Something to do with a retired astronomer discovering a potential impactor
on the Moon within a year. Ever since the EveryMan population defunded
Skywatch the impactor census program has proceeded mostly in the non-
professional sector; therefore the popular press does not treat the threat
seriously. But a few who understand the consequences have examined the
data, and it is the end of the Moon, which, of course, is the end of life on
Earth."
"In the vast majority of cases the greater gravitational well of the
parent planet saves its satellites from most major impacts. The record
shows that the Earth has been hit twenty times as much as the Moon. And
given the present age and state of the Solar System the chances of a Moon-
destroyer are very slim. But slim doesn't mean zero, and in about eleven
months our satellite will cease to exist."
"Since the Moon has practically no iron core, and because of it
composition, it has less mass and therefore much gravitational integrity
than Earth. The object that will shatter the Moon is a so-far nameless NiFe
asteroid about 50km along its major axis. Its trajectory is such that it will
blast most of the material away from us, although there will be some
secondary impacts on Earth that will cause regional, not global,
devastation."
So much of this new subject was over their heads, except for
James who had hung around with the Physicists at UVa. None of them
were trained in astrophysics or celestial mechanics. Billy and Sareena had
a vague idea about these concepts, but Kathryn was completely lost.
"The real damage will come from future instability of the Earth's
rotational axis. The added energy and change of angular momentum in the
Earth-Moon system, and the loss of the gyroscopic function of our satellite
will cause our planet to precess wildly. Now..."
Kathryn had to interrupt. "I'm sorry, but I'm not a scientist like
you obviously are. I haven't a clue as to what you're talking about. And
what any of us here can do about it."
Jamie paused in a smile. "I'm sorry, let me back up. Simply put,
like a top, the Earth spins on its axis. It's a stable spin with only the
smallest amount of wobble. This stability is provided by the Moon, whose
gravity tugs just enough to keep the wobbling to a minimum. We tilt

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slightly more toward the Sun then gradually tilt away over a twenty-five
thousand year period. And the change in tilt is only about one degree."
"Tilting toward the Sun warms us a little; tilting away cools us.
Even this small tilt, coupled with other factors, is enough to bring on ice-
ages alternating with global warming. We're in the warming phase now;
the last ice-age was about 12,000 years ago. But even these climatic
variations are mild enough and occur over such long periods of time that
we can adapt."
"Now take the Moon out of the picture. Our tilt will become
erratic, varying as much as 90 degrees or more, and occurring
aperiodically, over several hundred to several thousand years. Think what
this means! Severe ice-ages which freeze everything down to the tropics
can occur within several human generations. Follow this will be massive
warming wherein the polar caps completely melt. The variation in stress on
tectonic plate boundaries from the rapid water-mass displacement will
cause huge increases in volcanism and seismic activity. The..."
"Whoa! You're getting technical again. In English please, what
can we do about it?"
Jamie stood patiently for a moment, thinking, staring at nothing.
Then, even more seriously than before, "Kathryn, it means that most of the
10 billion people on Earth will die. The Mentors' numbers will never reach
critical mass, populations will become so small, and climate so
unpredictable, that humans as a species will die out, and it is unlikely that
any other thinking species will evolve."
"Now, what can we do about this? As I said, evolving naturally
Mentors will not have sufficient numbers to close the gaps between our
Greater World patches and affect local space, i.e. the Earth-Moon system,
to avert this catastrophe. Therefore, this group, you four and I, as well as
others trying different tacts such as genetic manipulation, are attempting to
force the issue, to break through, as it were, to the Greater World. We think
this team can do it with advanced cyberspace techniques."
"Wait a minute," said Billy, seeing an obvious flaw in this
argument. "Cyberspace can't affect anything. All this VR stuff is just
information, not any sort of physical manipulation. It'd be like expecting
pictures of a tornado on the TV to blow things around in your living
room."
"True enough Billy. True enough.” Jamie smiled a Cheshire Cat
smile. “All the research we want you to do will serve as nothing more than
a foil for your intellect. Remember, the Greater World comes from the
ability to conceive it, not by actually doing anything. The devices we use
are metaphors for what our minds actually do. We conceived of metastable
states in a HeNe mix, then merely let the Laser take advantage of this

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conception. If we can manipulate a virtual space we will then be able to
manipulate real space. Or so we think."
The actress started to object that she was no scientist, but Jamie
held up her hand.
"You yourself, Kathryn, have taken a fundamental step. You
merged with your avatar back there in that virtual space. The rest of you
still have a foot, so to speak, back in the real world. Sareena, your
perception of cyberspace is identical to the real world, but you haven't been
able to extend that perception to manipulation. Billy, you know you're still
on that beach in Oregon, and James, you're such a newbie that this must
seem more like a conference call."
"You're right," the mathematician answered, "Although I can't
deny the taste of this coffee, I have no innate sense of what happened to the
girls. So why am I here?"
"Your mathematics are and will be the foundation of what it will
take to make that leap into the greater world. Remember that mathematics
is just the most advanced kind of rational symbolism, and your ideas
incorporate a huge advance in symbolics. But all of you are of the evolving
Mentor branch of the human tree. Mentors can come from any creative
background. There is a preponderance of Mentor scientists only because
the problem-solving inclinations of most Mentors make science more
attractive than, say, sculpture. Or drama, Kathryn."
Silence fell. By now the team had been long in faux Mobius
Space, from an hour for James to half a day for Billy and Kathryn. No
matter how wonderful the simulation of breakfast was, the team's real
bodies would be crying out for attention soon, for food and other
necessities. Jamie explained this to them.
“It’s why, despite my clever hijacking of your current VR
excursions, except for you James, I can’t do this by myself. I alone cannot
create a large enough ‘splash’, so to speak. I need you to jump in with me.”
"Folks, I need a commitment. Billy, James, I think we've already
reached an agreement." At this the engineer looked down tellingly, which
Jamie noticed but moved on. "Now I need to get your thoughts ladies.
Kathryn, I know that you're about to take some time to collect yourself.
Would you please work with us? We have plenty of resources--technical,
financial--to support you, all of you. And we can find others to replace you
if you don't want to join. That goes for any of you. No bad feelings, really."
Kathryn was thinking, what have I got to loose? Maybe a fifth life
will be the charm. "OK, I'm in, for whatever that's worth."
Jamie shook Kathryn's hand. "It's worth more than you can know.
You four were asked because we see you working as a team very
efficiently. You're strong individualists who will cooperate with little

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friction. Later I'll tell you how I know that, if you haven’t already figured it
out by the time we’ve succeeded."
Turning to the last member, the teenager, Jamie said, "This will be
hardest on you. You might think that you're just a kid, but you're much
more. We're gonna have to ask you to grow up fast. I think you can do it--I
know you don't hang with the other kids very much. And I also know that
we adults will take to you quickly, and treat you as an equal. That was one
of the qualities we looked at when we chose Billy, Kathryn, and James."
Sareena, looked at the mathematician sitting next to her. He
seemed like a really nice guy, and she believed what Jamie had said about
him and about the rest. "What do I tell my parents and my friends?"
Jamie turned solemn. "You must keep quiet about this. Chances
are that nobody would believe any of you if you leaked this story. Anyway,
the work can be started remotely, so you don't have to leave home just yet.
Eventually we’ll all have to relocate close together for a short while, but
once you can start manipulating a Mobius Space by yourself, you'll be able
to meet at our facility anytime, and be home for dinner. Eventually, even
time won't be a problem. However, we must work together to that point."
Sareena thought to herself, this sounds cool! Working on a secret
project with grownup experts? Something hidden even from my parents? It
was like an adolescent adventure novel to her. All that exhaustion she felt
back in the park was gone. "Sure! I'll join your team. When do we start?"
"First, you all go home and rest. This has been a full day for some
of you. Billy's been up all night and it's midday for him. It's midday for
Sareena too, and late at night for James and Kathryn. Don't get upset about
the fact that it can't be noon ten time zones apart. Just one of those things
you'll learn about Mobius Space. I'll be in contact with you individually so
we can get things set up."
And with that Jamie paid their bill (much to the confusion of her
guests), and as each walked out the door of the diner they found
themselves back where they had started this journey.

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PART II

Chapter 10
Ladders are funny things, thought Ernie Martirez. Climbing them
in real life is never as easy as seems. Oh, he wasn’t thinking about painting
his house, not that kind of ladder. He had plans to get to the top,
nonetheless. And he had to make a climb; his boss, Congressman Doltman
of New York, was his ladder.
Ernie, twenty-something with an attractive enough face, well-
tanned and clean-shaven, his medium build clothed in stylish business suit,
had been working for the Representative for only a few months since
leaving the University of Miami (still known as Sunshine U) with his
degree in Political Science. Hmmf, he thought, ain't no science in politics.
Can't be. Ernie hated science but loved politics. It was the perfect career
for a fawning sycophant. His Uncle Fred had been friends with Doltman
since prison (the former in for spousal abuse, the latter for embezzlement)
years ago and had secured a staff position for Ernie in his Junior year.
And what a great position! Doltman was an outspoken figure in
the minority Republicratic party. Minority party, yes, but one that
resonated with statists across the country, statists who deeply resented the
loss of prestige and power when those damned Liberty Party members
gave the country back to its responsible citizens. Collectivists, loud and
large in numbers, were on a mission to reinstitute the nanny state of the
twentieth century, but in opposing the current prosperity of personal
freedom Republicrats needed an issue so compelling yet ambiguous that
any semblance of reason in the general population could be clouded by
FUD: fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Ernie saw immediately that locating such an issue for his boss
would catapult him to center stage politically. First Doltman becomes the
hero of his party, then in a few years becomes Senator Doltman. If the
issue is so good that Republicrats regain power, and if they can buy that
judge who presided at the embezzlement trial, make her reverse her
decision, can a President Doltman be far behind? Just think of the gratitude
he'd be entitled to from his boss, the favors he'd be owed, and where this
would lead him!
But what issue would work? It had to be something that could be
easily explained to the public, yet an issue that could be effortlessly
clouded by jargon. It had to be down-home patriotic yet topical. It had to
be expensive so jobs and favors (read: pork) would flow without question.
Something vital, close to home, life or death even. Something that the
average citizen wouldn't naturally understand so that his party couldn't be

- 36 -
caught in a lie. Maybe his Uncle Al could think of something; he was quite
experienced in the art of obfuscation.

- 37 -
 Chapter 11
James removed the headgear as the diner by the sea faded from
his mind's eye. He was no stranger to technology, having given a few
seminars in virtual lecture halls. He had also used 3D topographical
mapping programs to help with his research, but in none of these
experiences was the line between the simulation and reality anything but
distinct. This Jamie person had made that distinction questionable. He still
thought of her as "person", not necessarily "woman", for he still puzzled
over her confession that Natalie and some man named Nathan were also
her. There was something intangibly different yet familiar about her. No
matter: apply the theorem of indistinguishability and go with it.
The hour was late back here in the Blue Ridge foothills; even
Bugger was asleep after his evening's prowl. The mysterious van was
nowhere to be seen; how had she done that? James gave up wondering, put
the headset aside, and hit the sack, falling asleep almost immediately.
However, the scope of all he had learned had him wide-awake at dawn's
first light. He lay fighting the covers for an hour, until he gave in to his
overactive brain. A stretch, a shower, comfortable clothes, a Coke and a
muffin, and he was at his computer using the free-
association/brainstorming program he relied on to organize his thoughts.
The possibilities presented by Jamie's proposition of a Greater
World existing by virtue of a cognoscenti gestalt were boundless. Postulate
that a sufficient amount of applied mathematics understood by a sufficient
number of persons breathes life into the consequences of those
mathematics. The enormous consequences of directing, say, quantum
tunneling would allow large amounts of matter to be repositioned without
moving through the intervening space, instead of the occasional electron
escaping a potential well.
The infinitely small probability of all the atoms in a kilogram of
iron tunneling at the same time to the same remote location, and
reassembling in the same configuration could only be described by super-
valued numbers and a significant advance in the use of Exalogs. This
meant the implementation of Exalog statistics, a formidable task, though
nothing really fundamental had to be derived. However, in the course of
any research, innovations were inevitable. What he had to do was establish
a boilerplate way of calculating the impossibly remote chance of a single
event occurring given near unlimited degrees of freedom. Then he had to
find a way of making these numbers workable so they could be hard-coded
into a device. First though, James would need to know how Billy's MIVI
devices worked, especially the underlying principles, so he could get some
idea of the scope of the problem.

- 38 -
 His brainstorming program had put these ideas into what looked
like a roadmap for clouds. There were black thick lines connecting the
fundamentals of Exalogs, represented as blue nebulae. From these, thinner
green lines fingered out to a mass of dense clouds of violet spread out
across the screen. Violet signified compression techniques, and the green
lines depicted a lack of clarity in their function within James' thesis. On the
periphery was a circle of gray fog with nary a connector to the other
clouds: in other words, the true gray area. All this told him at this early
stage was that there was much work to be done.
The Sun had come up and Bugger was meowing to go out. The
cat had a catdoor, but he insisted that James open the human door for him.
This was probably because once James was outside he took a walk in the
local woods, making it safe for Bugger to explore the hollow. These walks
did much to stimulate the mathematician's imagination. So he put on his
shoes and a jacket, with Bugger supervising every move, and opened the
door wide enough for the cat. The feline looked up at him and gave a short
"mow", the flirted with the doorjamb for a minute, coyly poking his head
outside, then looking back at James.
"In or out, cat, make up your mind," James said uselessly. Bugger
did what he wanted, as did any cat, with little regard for human prompting.
This time Bugger did jump out and instantly assumed a defensive stance.
Something from the woods foraging close to the house? James looked up
to see, not a raccoon or deer, but a van, the van, pulling again into his
driveway. Jees! No rest for the weary, he thought. I haven't even gotten the
release time from school yet.
Jamie parked and waved. She was still dressed as the day before,
and called, "It's deja vu all over again, huh James? By the way, how come
no-one calls you Jim?"
"Because it inevitably devolves to 'Jimbo', and that I can't abide.
You're here bright and early."
She walked up to James and stood looking up at him. She was tall
but he was still a reach for her eyes. "I kinda had the feeling that you
would be up. I could see it in your eyes when you left my 'diner'. You were
getting that look: this means that, that implies this, this leads to that. You
know what I mean. I see Bugger is taking you for a walk. Mind if I join
you?"
James normally liked the solitude of his walks, but how could he
saw no? "Sure! I don't go far, just up there." He pointed to the crest of a
nearby knoll. "By the way, why that Natalie guise?
"Oh, I like to play the chanteuse sometimes. It's not really my
style, but I've been through a lot of changes in the last year, and, well, you
gotta try new things, you know? Besides, I wanted to grab your attention.
Did it work?" she said, knowing the answer.

- 39 -
 He gave her a sideways glance and cocked an eyebrow: his only
response. After zipping his light blue jacket he made a sweeping gesture to
her at the trailhead, and they picked their way along the well-worn path
through James' backyard to a stand of old maple trees at the foot of the
small hill. The early morning air was crisp and the Fall leaves crunched
where the dew had not soaked them. The sun was still low in the East
behind them as they started up the hill. Jamie asked, "How much do you
know about Mobius Space?"
"I've reviewed several pre-prints on the subject for the MAA, and
of course know the principle of the Mobius Strip. I've tried to teach the
topology of the strip to my more advanced students, but it's usually over
their heads."
"Well, I'm a physicist by training, not a mathematician, so I treat
math loosely, like a toolbox; if some of the tools get dirty, so be it. I'll give
you my operational definitions. When you consider a Mobius Strip, it's a
closed surface, which exists in three dimensions though it can be mapped
onto two. This requires that every co-ordinate on the surface of a single
loop strip to have twenty spatial degrees of freedom, plus time, assuming
you exist in three dimensions. Imagine a resident of Flatland on a Mobius
Strip!"
They stopped for a moment to give Bugger a chance to return
from a scouting mission. James considered the utter bewilderment of the
poor Flatlander and chuckled as they started on up the hill.
"As you increase the loops describing the co-ordinate system
becomes more complicated but eventually it repeats. There is only one
destination: the beginning, the junction of the ends of the strip. This
constrains the temporal dimension since no two objects can exist in the
same place at the same time and the Flatlander has a consistent reality."
"Now consider a Mobius Space; it must exist in at least four
dimensions for a single manifold or 'loop', whatever that would be. Each
loop represents fifty-six degrees of freedom, again assuming we live only
in 3D, and there are not one but three outcomes for following the loop for
one complete cycle. This means that there can be apparent paradoxes in
time because three sets of co-ordinates exist simultaneously. The
interesting thing is, unlike a 2D strip, the more loops in the space the more
intersections it has with itself, and the greater the number of consistent
simultaneities. And ... it ... gets better."
Jamie stopped her lecture as she was getting short on breath
climbing the hill. James was lost in thought, so they walked silently for a
few minutes, in and out of the morning sunlight, until they came to a 'settin
rock' with a view of James' property and eastward across the hollow. They
decided to 'set' a spell; Bugger joined them, curling up at their feet as she
continued.

- 40 -
 "The upper limit to the number of loops in a Mobius manifold that
are non-redundant approaches 1050, within an order of magnitude or so. It
is approximately the number of discreet particles in the Universe, since
every mass can warp space, divided by the number of aggregates--
everything from atoms to stars. And since the four spatial dimensions are
orthogonal, a 3D being can choose any three at a time. Think of the
permutations! Factor in those 56 degrees of freedom and the imagination
of potentially millions of Mentors, well, you see you have functionally an
infinite quantity of mutually inclusive realities. This is where my math
breaks down, but your Exalog routines are perfectly suited."
James blushed. "Thanks. I've been just considering dealing with
super-valued probabilities in the abstract, but it's naturally really sketchy at
this point. And I haven't begun to include the non-linear dynamical
elements; that'll be a real can of worms. What I have no clue about is how
this idea, even when I get a handle on it, gets put into software and
hardware."
"Just explain it to Sareena and she'll do the translation."
"Now how in hell will I explain all this to the girl? She's bright,
but Jees Jamie, she's just a kid! It took me years to come up with this. I
can't possibly get a kid to understand it in a month."
"Ah, but that's why I picked you and her. I don't know how you'll
do it, but I know you two can do it. Don't ask me how I know this: let's just
say that it will become obvious later. Being a Physicist I might teach
differently than you would, but I'd present axiom and theorem as facts and
skip all the derivations. I know that's what math people like to do best, but
we don't have years. Besides, you can start tutoring her remotely in the
basics immediately, before you get to the new stuff."
A cloud of skepticism formed over James' head, as visible as any
water vapor cloud. Even Bugger sensed it as he looked up at the
mathematician and 'mowwwed'. The woman grinned.
"Hey! I didn't say it would be easy! Take it one step at a time.
You know, I'm tired of all this technical talk. Can't we talk about
something else? I know you're way involved with these ideas, but I'm a
little burned out." Jamie took a deep breath and stretched. "It's beautiful up
here! The Fall colors, the smells, your silly cat. You got a good life,
Professor Navell, a good life."
James did have to crank it down a notch; his mind was on math
overdrive. It's sad but true that when you live in an idyllic environment you
tend to take it for granted. He had to remind himself just how nice his life
was. "Yes, I've got to agree. When all you have to bitch about it that your
students don't live up to your expectations, you don't have any real excuse
to complain. Of course, there's that lunar impactor to worry about."

- 41 -
 "Now now, no technical talk!" cried Jamie, "but I guess the
subject can't be totally avoided. Hmmmm. We had a nice chat when
'Natalie" visited last evening, but I want to know more about you. I know
it's been less than 24 hours, but how do you feel about the project, the
team, this whole thing?"
If he had doubts earlier about Jamie's true gender, that question
dispelled them. Not "what do you think about"; she asked "how do you
feel?" A fundamentally woman's question.
"Do you mean my predictions for a successful outcome, or my
emotional response to a scientific theory?"
She hit him playfully. "Men! You're about to embark on the most
monumental intellectual adventure in the history of humankind! Doesn't it
excite you, worry you, scare you? How do you feel?"
He stubbornly harrumphed. "To be honest, I feel trepidation at the
enormity of the task, but I mostly think about the mathematics. Though I
suppose if, or hopefully when, I find a proper set of algorithms I'll feel
excited."
"And that's it?"
"Yep, 'Fraid so. I'm not what you would call a moody person. If
you were to plot my disposition over time, with the base line being zero
emotion, my feelings would fluctuate nominally around a point just on the
happy side of content. I rarely feel ecstatic, but I'm almost never
depressed."
Jamie remembered how she used to be like this, but now she was
different, and visibly frustrated by this answer. She tried a different
approach. "OK, what about Billy? Did you get a sense that he is a
competent engineer, someone you can get along with?"
"If you mean that, since I'm clearly the oldest member..."
"Which you are not!"
He stared at her for a moment. "Well, I was born in the last
century. And if you think I have any racial baggage from the 20th Century,
forget it. Most intelligent people never subscribed to that notion of
pigmentation as an indicator of competence anyway. Other than that, I
guess he's good. It's a gut feeling; since I have no real data."
Slightly encouraged Jamie asked "What about the girls?"
"Again, I have no data. The kid seems pretty mature for, what,
thirteen? And Kathryn's kinda cute, but hell, I don't know. They're fine I
guess. You know much more about them. I barely know their last names.
By the way, I never got your last name," he said leadingly.
Jamie's eyes twinkled and she grinned her Cheshire grin. "Let's
just leave it at Jamie for now."

- 42 -
 "Well, OK, Woman of Mystery." He paused for a moment, then
spoke. "I was wondering, are there any other of these Mentor people at
UVa? I know a lot of bright folks there. Maybe they could help us?"
"Oh, yes, definitely there are others at your school, and no, they
can't help us. Well, they are evolved enough to, but I've arranged this team
just so. Remember, the goal is not to build this Mobius Space MIVI device,
it's just the focus our abilities. And in this case, too many cooks, you know.
Four people working together is a very stable arrangement, dating back to
prehistoric hunting parties. I don't count as part of the group; I'm more of a
recruiter slash database for you. Oh, the technology will work, I'm pretty
sure of that, given all your expertise. With a little luck, we'll get the job
done. Damn! I wanted to get away from this technical stuff."
It was James's turn to grin. "Sorry. Anyway, this will save the
world? er, Moon?"
She sighed, giving in to inertia of the conversation, "Well, no,
honestly. You will make the math that Sareena will code into drivers so
Billy's technology can be piloted by Kathryn. If it all works the gestalt of
our group will allow first Kathryn, then the rest, to manipulate a Mobius
Space. The fact that we can do this, not the actual doing, will act as a
catalyst to connect us with other groups seeking to unify the currently
piecemeal Greater World. It will be something like the A.C. Clarke novel
Childhood's End. Did you ever read it? At some point in the future an
entire generation of children evolve rapidly under the guidance of an alien
race and leave their parents behind on a disintegrating Earth. Well, there
aren't any aliens we know of, and we won't be leaving everyone else
behind. But the problem of the Lunar Impactor will be moot."
"I see, maybe. But I still need to know something about this MIVI
gear and cyberspace technology, at least to satisfy my own curiosity," said
James as they rose for the walk back down the hill. The sun was getting
warmer now so he unzipped his jacket and slung it jauntily over his
shoulder.
"OK, let me fill you in on some of the theory behind cyberspace.
Each coordinate in a virtual space is represented by a 3Dexel, a 3
dimensional picture element, that has a bit depth of about 16 million
colors, shades, and intensities. These 3Dexels are positioned in a space
limited in scale only by bandwidth. For instance, Billy was performing in a
representation of the Royal Albert Hall when I contacted him. The actual
hall is about 1 million cubic meters, and each cubic meter is depicted by
about 900,000 3Dexels on a side. There are techniques to make the most of
the bandwidth--compression, vectoring, redundancy, non-refreshing static
images--but you can see that under the worst case scenario, every thirtieth
of a second about 1034 bits must be addressed. MIVI funnels this data to
the user, allowing control over certain audio-visual parameters of the

- 43 -
space. Your, and our, job will be to add a Mobius Space probability factor
for each of these bits. Ouch! Even the fattest pipe can't handle that.
Exalogs to the rescue!"
Bugger was busy flushing all the small wildlife from the trail
before the two scientists; clearly all this human technical talk was beneath
a cat. But it had sent the mathematician off to a wonderland of postulates
and algorithms. Jamie sensed this and didn't talk for the rest of the trip
down the hill. Not until they were walking through James' backyard toward
the van did he come out of his reverie and ask her to stay for breakfast.
"No thanks, dear boy. I must be off to UVa to secure your
sabbatical. And keep the headset as a signing bonus!" She hugged him
tightly. "It's been a real pleasure James, despite all the 'shop talk'. We never
got to visit much in the past, but that will change and we'll catch up
sometime."
As Jamie pulled back out of the driveway he puzzled over that last
remark. Never got to visit much in the past? A mysterious yet vaguely
familiar woman. And what a task she had presented him! He had no idea
when he had accepted the challenge. Many long walks in the woods lay
ahead for Professor Navell.

- 44 -
 Chapter 12
Billy was striking his setup on the now bright and windy Oregon
beach. He had missed the end of the Wall concert, much to his dismay, but
the prospect of almost a year off his mundane job to work on this curious
and clandestine project, and well-paid at that, somewhat mitigated his lost
performance opportunity. He still didn't believe that weird story about a
Greater World or whatever that chick was talking about, but her Nathan
act, and the engineering behind that almost real dining experience were not
to be taken lightly. Just like the Wall concert where he was playing with
world-class musicians, this team Jamie had pulled together, and the
apparent resources at her disposal, had Manhattan Project 2.0 written all
over it, if it was for real.
He'd checked his email and found his contract with GameChamp
had been suspended for 12 months, starting immediately, with a guarantee
of full employment after that time. (The guarantee was more for the
company than for Billy; they needed him.) Man she works fast! Here was
further evidence that Jamie was not just bullshitting him. She had said that
his contribution would have to wait until the software was in place, which
would have to wait until the math was in place, so Billy could spend the
next two months finishing up projects at work, tying up loose ends, if he
wanted. It wouldn't take nearly that long. Besides, he had a ladyfriend
(actually two: one pretty, cool and calm; the other hot and wild) with
whom he needed to spend some quality time. And he could get started
researching and designing the necessary nanochips for an expanded-
capability interface. The drivers would have to wait for Sareena.
That girl; barely a teenager. The more he thought about it, the
more unreal this whole project was. Twelve hours ago he was playing in a
bar in Eugene; now he was taking a leave of absence from GameChamp to
join a small team with two members not even proven scientists. The speed
at which this alteration to his life happened spoke of a group with great
stroke. Billy would have guessed that some nefarious government agency
was backing all this, but the Liberty Party Revolution had brought most of
the Machiavellian tendencies of the Statists to a screeching halt. So who
were they, the people funding and guiding this project? Were they really a
loose amalgam of beneficent brainy types in control of some awesome
technology, pursuing some outrageous theory? Boy, he had some doubts,
but for now, as long as the money was good, and the project was
interesting and benign, he was into it.
Billy packed the gear onto his bike and searched the tourist
database for a local motel or B&B. There were several of the latter with
rooms available, so he chose the closest, a place called Piños del Mar. He
gunned the Wankel and headed back up the road that had brought him to

- 45 -
this astounding turn of events. The Bed and Breakfast was only a couple of
klicks away; it was a quaint three-story white frame house set back in some
wind-swept trees, slightly run down but clean enough. After checking in
with the proprietor, a cheerful, youngish widow named Elaine, he got a
quick box lunch (even though for him it felt like dinner time) then crawled
into bed and was out for sixteen hours.
Billy was awakened mid-morning the next day by the discreet
humming of his portable computer: incoming mail. He always had tons of
messages, but the alarm was set to respond only to certain priority headers.
Groggily he swore at the machine with expletives it was not programmed
to respond to. He dozed for a couple of minutes until it hummed again
persistently. This time he nearly yelled his favorite curse but squelched it,
remembering that he might have neighbors. In defeat he called "read" and
the computer obediently recited the intrusive message:
"Good morning, Billy. It's Jamie. Sorry to wake you, but I'm on a
tight schedule, riding herd on you four. I didn't want to pop in
unannounced, but we should talk; shall we meet for lunch? I imagine
you're hungry, having slept away half a day. A real lunch. No, I'm not
obsessed with food, it's just a friendlier to talk over a meal, at least until we
have your lab ready to go."
Billy told his computer to reply to the sender (How did she get on
his priority list? then Why even ask?) with a grumpy affirmative--he had
stock replies saved for just such an occasion--and got an immediate
answer. "OK OK, I'll pay! Jees, what a grouch! Just kidding. I'll meet you
later at this great Italian place down the coast in Bandon. It's called
Frantonio's. Hope you like excellent pizza. I expect you want to wake up,
get clean, and check out before you head south. Meet you there, say,
around 2?"
He was heading south later, back home to Santa Cruz to finish up
old projects and get ready for new ones, but did he ever mention that to
her? For that matter, what was she doing in Western Oregon? Why not just
call? Such a cute chick, but a mystery. He sent a terse confirmation back,
still too grumpy to apologize for it. He'd make it up to Jamie later. For
now: a shower, a shave, repacking and refueling the bike (he'd prepaid the
room), and back onto the road.
Billy always felt good cruising on that big motorcycle. Wind
blowing in his face always seemed to blow downer thoughts away. His
good night's sleep had pushed his major concerns to the background, and
now that he was fully awake his ornery attitude had evaporated. He was
going to have lunch with a hottie, and she was treating him; what was
wrong with that? Highway 1 stretched before him with little traffic for a
Monday, and the warm sun and cool sea air got his appetite going. Jamie
was going to pay for a big lunch!

- 46 -
 The engineer hummed down the highway at a slightly illegal clip,
passing the occasional car, stopping at the more spectacular scenic vistas,
not in any hurry to be on time. He was a man who hated authority and
regimentation and took any opportunity to flaunt the fact that most
authority needed him more than he needed them. Engineering, and music
for that matter, required reams of self-discipline, and his distain for
external controls was no doubt a reaction to his internal restraint.
After an all too brief ride Billy pulled into town. Bandon hadn't
noticed that the century had changed thirty years earlier. It was still sleepy,
still fishy, still touristy for the budget minded. A gem, a diamond in the
rough that was glad to be that way. Chain and franchise restaurants didn't
do well here, as the locals and visitors alike preferred the inexpensive yet
exceptional local fare. Frantonio's was a fixture in this neck of the Oregon
coast, not a pristine new building but not a rundown barn either. It
eschewed the faux Italian villa look many such restaurants go for; its
facade merely said Good Food Within without any garish signs.
Billy parked and wandered inside. It was 2:45; he had succeeded
in being fashionably late. Looking around, though, he didn't immediately
see Jamie, or Nathan for that matter. Of course, he wouldn't expect to, this
being a real restaurant and not a virtual space. But he was not about to put
anything past her. He decided to wash up first--the place was not busy in
the middle of the afternoon--and then check with the hostess. Coming out
of the restroom a couple of minutes later he saw Jamie, wearing a long
peasant skirt and lace blouse, walk through the front door of Frantonio's.
She didn't even gaze around for him; she immediately looked right at him,
smiled a disarming smile, and waved. They met at a high-backed wooden
booth halfway between them that would afford them some seclusion.
"Billy! So good to see you in the flesh! Hope you didn't have to
wait long..." (Damn! My best laid schemes went aft a-gley) "...I was
detained in an earlier meeting with James."
"No harm done" (He was not going to admit his late arrival! Let
her think he's the wronged party.)
"Good! Let's eat." They motioned to the waitress and ordered the
house specialty, a seafood pizza. Jamie and Billy traded small talk for a
few minutes, but then after one of those brief lulls that come in every
conversation Jamie looked at Billy without her usual Disappearing Cat grin
and spoke.
"I got the feeling when we were all talking back at that diner that
you had reservations about this project. I'd like to hear them."
Billy wore his poker face; this was too good a gig to blow, but
needed to get some things clear in his mind. "You know, your technology
is really impressive, and I got no doubts about your stroke and everything,
but, well this whole story about a Greater Universe or whatever. You

- 47 -
know, that's just a little far out. And that idea about some super version of
MIVI being able to save the Moon. Shouldn't we be trying to do something
more positive about it? If it means the end of the Earth, why don't we, why
don't you, because you have so much pull, get a movement going to save
the Moon? It just seems like a waste of time to play in VR if this major
disaster is going to happen."
Jamie was about to reply when the pizza arrived. An inopportune
moment for pizza, but fortunately it was too hot to eat right then. She had a
couple of minutes. "Let me answer the second question first. Think of your
basic Physics. An object composed of Nickel and Iron, traveling at 60,000
miles per hour relative to the Moon. An ellipsoid 50km along its major
axis, 10km across its equator. That's power on the order of 1026 joules
every second, about equal to the Sun's output. There's nothing in current
Real World technology that can match that. Besides, most of the world is
so scientifically illiterate and innumerate that we couldn't begin to explain
to them. Remember, it's already been reported in the mainstream media,
and few are worried. Oh, you see the occasional Op-Ed piece about how
we should Save the Moon, and of course Sci-Am is very involved with the
research, but the world at large, the UN in particular, is obsessed with
global warming. Their scientific agendas are merely pretexts for political
ones. And they can't make political hay out of a lunar impactor. Nope, the
only hope is to alter the reality of the impact itself, not try to prevent it
with the impotent tools available in the Real World."
This kept Billy quiet as the couple devoured the pizza. The
seriousness of the conversation detracted from the enjoyment of this most
excellent meal. Billy finally sat back, took a deep breath and let out a sigh.
"OK. So you can't ..."
"WE can't Billy. I hope you're still with us?"
"So far. OK, so we can't do anything conventional about it. How
could MIVI do anything about it? I guess I mean, how do you know MIVI
can do anything about it?"
"MIVI can't do anything about it. MIVI is just a starting point for
a greater spec. And even then, whatever you come up with won't do a thing
either. It's merely a vehicle, a catalyst, to launch first Kathryn, then the rest
of the team, into a gestalt with others like us. This whole project just serves
to focus us like a big lens. I'm confident that, if you allow yourself to get
wrapped up in the project, not worrying about "believing" in some fantasy,
your latent abilities will surface. Listen, have you ever been totally carried
away by the music you're playing? Felt a connection with your fellow
musicians that went way beyond any other form of communication? Like it
had you plugged into each other brain to brain? That's what we're looking
for, that's what we hope this group can achieve. However, when we get it,
we'll be plugged into Mentors all over the world. We'll attain a "critical

- 48 -
mass" so to speak, and, well, you won't believe it, you just won't. I know;
I've been there."
Billy's resolve to remain overtly pissed was fading fast. A good
night's sleep, a fine ride, great meal, major babe--it was tough to maintain
the image of the stubborn engineer. He had one last card to play. "What
about my gigs? You know, I've got a lot of gigs lined up, in real clubs and
on the net."
"Not a problem," Jamie said. "The real work won't start for
several months. I've already broadly explained to James the principles
behind MIVI, but you'll have to fill in the details if he has any questions.
And then I think you'll do your part without any fuss. The math and code
will be in place, and we picked you precisely because of your ability to get
the job done. In fact, your musical mind will help you find the solutions."
"How's that?"
"I don't know for sure, just a hunch. But you'll have some free
time. And don't you have some unfinished business with a couple of young
ladies back home?" Jamie teased.
If Billy's complexion would have allowed him to blush he would
have. "How'd you know that? You won't tell one about the other, will
you?"
"Nah, a rogue like yourself needs extra, er, attention, the kind
only Amanda and Leigh can provide. I won't say a word," she said with a
wink. "Now, I can't give you too much to work on while you wait for the
rest of us, but I'm getting some ideas and might ask you to do a little side
project. I want to talk MIVI theory with you sometime, but right now I've
got to pay the bill and get going. And I expect you want to get in a few
hours ride, eh?"
There was just no way to say no to this woman. Billy dropped all
pretense of being obstinate and assured Jamie that he was committed to
this project, wherever it would lead. She left the waitress a nice tip and
walked outside together.
"Nice bike Billy!"
"Thanks. Not many rotaries left."
"Well, be careful, and have a good ride. I'll be in touch."
They stood for a moment awkwardly, then Jamie gave Billy a
friendly hug. Persuasive woman, this one, he thought. She walked around
the corner of the building, and Billy waited for a while to see what she was
driving. After a while when no car appeared he fired up his motorcycle and
cruised around the side. No car, no exit. Another mystery! But why ask
how? He swung the bike onto the southbound lane and headed back to
California. That hug had cleared his mind of technology and loaded it with
thoughts of Amanda and Leigh, enough to warm his ride into the early
Oregon Autumn evening.

- 49 -
 Chapter 13
It was almost a week before Sareena heard from the team, a week
where her excitement was almost uncontainable. A secret project that
would change the course of human evolution! So cool, and she was dying
to tell somebody. But she was true to her word and kept her involvement
(just barely) under wraps. Her mother suspected a mystery the way
mothers can tell when their daughters are hiding something; however, in
the way of good mothers she let Sareena have her secrets. Little did she
know the depth of those secrets.
School had just ended for the day and the weekend loomed ahead.
The kids burst from doorways of the well-worn brick schoolhouse,
thankful that they didn't have to learn anything for 48 hours. Sareena was
nearly the last student to leave, eager to get back to her programming and
Netlife while being a little bit down. The school bell had interrupted an
interesting class on early TTL circuitry.
As she walked slowly down the steps into the Kowloon heat she
was so accustomed to, struggling with her backpack loaded with books,
portable computer, and media she heard a boy's voice call, "Hi! Can I carry
your stuff for you?" She turned to see a tall white boy of about fourteen she
hadn't noticed before. Sareena typically ignored boys around her age. They
were usually caught between their juvenile tendencies for shunning girls
(yuck! cooties!) and becoming, via hormones, fascinated by girls'
developing bodies. This boy was smiling a nice smile, no braces but good
teeth, clear skin for a teenager. And he apparently wasn't showing off for
his friends like some boys do. She was still suspicious though and said
narrowly, "Hi. I don't know you. Why do you want to carry my stuff?"
The boy's smile expanded, his eyes sparkled. "Oh, I think you do
know me a little. And that pack looks heavy; I just want to help a pretty
girl out because she's gonna be helping me. My name is Jamie."
Sareena jumped. "Jamie! What? How can it be you? I just got
outta school, real school, and I haven't been online since last night. You
can't be an avatar!"
Jamie grinned a teenage boy I-know-something-you-don't know
grin. "I told you that you were borderline. Can move between a virtual
space and a real space without thinking about it. You can't do this yet, this
imaging stuff, but you can accept it (and almost understand it) when I do
it."
Sareena stared at the boy now holding her pack. There was
something familiar about him. He didn't look anything like the woman who
had taken her and that lady Kathryn to the virtual diner almost a week ago,
but he did look like James a little. She ventured, "Your name is almost the

- 50 -
same as that nice man, the math teacher. And you now look a little like
him, around the eyes and mouth."
Jamie said, "That's not completely a coincidence," and let it go
without any more elucidation. "I see that you've been good and kept our
little secret. Thanks; it's important."
Sareena asked, "Please, why can't I tell anybody?"
"Because it would not be good for the project." Jamie knew when
he (she?) said that it didn't show the proper respect for this girl, and he
immediately regretted it. He decided to change the subject. "Anyway,
where are you in your math? What are you studying?"
"I'm up to pre-calculus. I'll finish it this semester. It's easy, and
they let me skip a few grades to take it. Why?"
"Because we need you to put the math that James is working on
into a program. The program will run the VR rig Billy will design and
Kathryn will pilot. If we are successful this project will open the doorway
to the Greater World."
"OK. But, ah, James--" she was not real comfortable calling the
great mathematician by his first name"--does math I could never
understand."
Jamie smiled, looking older than the teenager he pretended to be.
"Don't sell yourself short, dear. You're pretty darn bright. Besides, James
will be your private tutor, walking you through the important parts."
Sareena brightened noticeably at this. She could test out of any
math course at her school if James was her tutor! He seemed like a cool
guy; he probably was a good teacher. Something to look forward to.
"Airy!” she said, using the currently popular slang. “When do we start?"
"Soon. He has to figure out some things first. We'll start with
virtual classroom for the basics. Then he'll come to Hong Kong and you
can get started. He's on a sabbatical, kinda like a working vacation, from
his school, so he can teach you in person, not virtually. We'll tell your
mom that the school is providing you with an advanced course tutor."
Jamie winked. "That way you can legally cut some classes."
This was sounding better and better, thought Sareena. But with
the persistence of youth, she returned to her previous question. "How
would it hurt the project if I told my mom? She wouldn't tell anyone."
Jamie sighed, but was grateful to make amends for the earlier
deflection. "It's a dilution/pollution problem. If you share your secret the
notoriety, even in your immediate family, will dilute your efforts. And
outside influences would pollute your ideas. It is your precise abilities that
we need, and outside suggestions and comments might perturb, meaning
alter, your own intuitions, especially if these suggestions come from
someone who isn't quite a Mentor."

- 51 -
 Sareena thought for a second. "What about my family? Aren't
they Mentors also? We're all related."
Jamie looked sadly at Sareena. "No, I think you are the first in
your bloodline to have that potential. Your mother is closest--clever, but
not exceptional. Your brothers and sisters are pretty average EveryFolk,
and your dad, whom I know you love dearly, is the typical EveryMan...”
The girl interrupted, “How do I know that I’m not EveryGirl?”
Jamie winked conspiratorially. “I know something about you that
you’ve never told anybody. When you close your eyes real tight, and
concentrate, you see a small pattern of rapidly rotating squares, kinda beige
in color, with a tiny dot in their centers.”
Sareena was aghast. “How did you know that?”
“It’s what you call a marker. Those who are more than Everyman
see these images. Since these little squares are perfectly Euclidean, we
think they indicate superior mathematical symbolic ability.”
“Gosh,” she said anachronistically.
“Most people don’t see this image, but that’s OK. You must
realize that we are not leaving everyone else behind, we are protecting
them, providing for them. We love and care for them because they are our
family and friends. They aren't "bad" or inferior just because they won't be
joining us in the Greater World; most are good, decent people, just without
our gift of advanced perception. I have, ah, a close friend, Patty, whom I
love a lot, but she's an EveryWoman. Has no idea what I really am,
couldn't understand it if I told her. She'd believe me, but couldn't
understand."
"Can't we do gene therapy or something? You know, to get
everyone into the Greater World?"
"No dear, at least not yet. No one knows which gene or
combination of genes is responsible for this. Besides, it's not like we're all
gonna leave or anything. Remember your Wenn diagrams: this Real World
is just a subset of the greater one."
Given all that she had seen, especially Jamie now appearing as a
kid, Sareena had to ask him, "Are you living in the Greater World?"
Jamie smiled slyly, "I will be."
This wasn't the answer Sareena was seeking, but Jamie was a
grownup, and she respected adults, even when they looked like cute boys.
"Are you really a boy now?" she asked.
"No, this is just an avatar of sorts. A particularly good avatar, but
only because you are a talented kid. But I know a lot about little boys. Why
do you ask? Don't you like boys?"
"Oh, I think they're cute and all, but they're just dumb. They talk
about stupid things like sports and cars and fighting and stuff." Sareena
started to say something about James being different, but duh! that was

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because he was a grownup. "You make a good boy though. Will I be able
to do that? Pretend to be someone else?"
"Sure! Generating an avatar is easy, but it seems that, once you
find yourself in the Greater World, your true nature shapes your
appearance more than in the Real World. I think once Kathryn gets
command of our equipment she'll be able to teach you quickly. You met
her when she had a very good avatar. Convincing, wasn't she?"
"Yea, totally!"
"Well, I helped the process a bit, technologically, but she did most
of the work. She just couldn't control it."
Sareena thought for a moment. "I can see how you were that
Nathan fellow when you first found Billy. That was in Net Space. And I
guess how I understand you were Kathryn in Kowloon Park, and how
you're a boy now, because I somehow can blur Real Space and Net Space.
But didn't you appear to be someone named Natalie when you found
mister, ah, James? He's not really a Net kinda guy it seems, but you met
him at his house. How did you do that?"
"Oh, I had a van full of equipment to help me! But with new
theories and better gear we should all be online quickly. And all this
depends on you and your programming skills. Feel up to it?"
Jamie really didn't have to ask this. Sareena was bursting at the
seams; the whole thing seemed so much more real to her after talking to
Jamie. Private tutoring from a world-class mathematician, a secret project
to save the planet and join a club of brainy people was awesome. But the
idea of pretending to be someone else was just too cool!
They had finally come to Sareena's high-rise. Jamie handed
Sareena her books. "OK, I get the message. James will be ready with the
new ideas in a month or two, but we'll start the lessons much sooner. It'll
take time for him to bring you up to speed, but we don't want to take too
much time away from his research. Your folks got that letter today, the one
about the special tutoring. I think you'll have an interesting dinner tonight,
talking about this "wonderful opportunity". Please, not a word about our
project."
"I promise. Jamie, one last thing."
"Yes?"
For a moment Sareena looked like the young girl she was, not the
prodigy programmer about to embark on a major step in human evolution.
"If we do this thing, you know, save the Earth or whatever, and if I join
your Greater World, can I still live with my parents and brothers and
sisters?"
Jamie smiled a wise smile that belied the teenage boy she
appeared to be. "Yes, of course. Our success will save and protect them,
and you'll be able to live your life however you want." With that Jamie

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surprised Sareena with a hug and a peck on the cheek. The girl was first
startled but then turned around and hugged the boy/woman right back.
They separated, Jamie looked around to check for observers, waved and
vanished with a slight pop.

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 Chapter 14
Kathryn found herself liking this woman who sat across from her
in the English Pub in Santa Monica. It was one of those warm Santa Ana
days in Autumn and Kathryn, dressed in short-shorts and a tube top was
“doing lunch” with her new friend/boss/compatriot. Jamie treated her with
the same respect, showed her the same confidence that she had shown to
the two men in her team. Kathryn was further impressed by the way Jamie
had brought the little girl into the group, never talking down to her, always
listening closely to Sareena's ideas and concerns, gently correcting and
guiding her, not as a mother but more like a teacher, or the Mentor she
professed to be.
Yes, there was much to admire in Jamie. Kathryn still wasn't sure
about that whole Greater World stuff, but the prospect of working on
something scientific began to appeal to her in a way she had never
imagined. Acting had been an all-consuming passion when she was
younger; science was always below her radar. Now, without any technical
education or training, Kathryn had been drawn into a group of tech-minded
people on Jamie's faith in her. And although she was only the pilot, not a
researcher or technician, she was caught up in the adventure, the fun of the
enterprise. And the pay was good too!
Jamie was talking about the timeline for the project, but not in a
rigorous fashion: there was ample opportunity for girl chat. "Like I said,
James has to do the math before we can really get started. Normally,
developing a whole branch of Mathematics takes years, but he has already
done most of heavy lifting, as it were. One of the most time-consuming
things in science and math is the endless peer review, when your
colleagues examine and critique your work. A wonderful system of checks
and error correction, but that won't be necessary here. I give him a month
or two, surely by January, and with a little focusing help from me he'll
come up with some brilliant algorithm that generates a consistent Mobius
Space. And once our team implements that, we should be able to connect
the patches of the Greater World."
Kathryn sipped on her Guinness. It had been over a month since
she had been in that virtual diner meeting and learned of all this
unbelievable stuff. Jamie later called to reassure her while she got things
underway. She told the future VR pilot to sit tight and try to relax, which
Kathryn did in spades, putting this upcoming adventure almost out of her
head. But when Jamie called to set up this lunch meeting, Kathryn began to
think more about her collaborators.
"Jamie, the guys you picked for the team. They seem like loners.
Are they married?"

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 "Nope, although Billy is a 'player', as he calls it. James is in a self-
imposed retirement. He hasn't had much luck with relationships over the
years. It's not that he abuses his girlfriends, or cheats, or anything. They
just seem to tire of him, at least according to him. So he's given up even
trying." Then she remembered a telling appraisal during a walk in the
Virginia hills. "But you know, I bet he secretly would like to be with
someone."
Kathryn sipped. "He seems so nice. You know, I haven't had a
romance for many years. Leon and I were as close to a romance as you
could get, but it was never physical. And since he died I've been involved
with so much NetSex that I haven't been inclined to find a real lover."
"Whoa!" cried Jamie, "I'm just project coordinator, not a
matchmaker. If you want to..."
"No no. I was just fantasizing. Not about James, just in general."
But Kathryn's face said otherwise. Jamie decided to get back to business.
"There is an intermediate step I'm working on with Billy before
the Mobius technology is ready for you. Sort of a training rig. It's kinda
weird when you first think about it, but it's a logical step for you who are
so experienced with a Body Double. It doesn't have a technical name, but I
call it ‘Hitch-hiking.’"
"And that is??"
"Hitch-hiking means that you come along for the ride, first when I
do my avatar things, and then Real World stuff. You can hear, taste, feel,
everything I do, except that instead of the telemetry from a Body Double
you get the feedback directly from my brain. You..."
"Hold it! Wait a minute! Slow down! You mean I possess your
body like some kind of demon?"
Jamie laughed so loud that other customers in the restaurant
looked to see
what was going on. "No,” she said, still chuckling, “it's more like the
ultimate home movie. And it's all done with technology, so there's nothing
supernatural about it. We'll meet again in a week or so, set up a workspace,
and I'll show you how it's done."
Kathryn was not convinced that she wanted any part of this. "And
why are we doing this?"
Jamie, now calmed down from her laughter, said, "The first trips
into Mobius Space you take will be very disorienting. Remember how
disconcerting it was becoming that Asian woman? It will be way more real
than that. Hitching a ride with me is a good way to acclimate."
Kathryn didn't respond, but an unspoken "Well, if you say so"
hanging in the air above her closed the discussion for now. There is a
theory that conversations have a certain periodicity; depending upon who's
involved in the discourse, every so often, and predictably so, a

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conversation hits a node, a point where silence naturally occurs. Perhaps
this is to give the talkers time to collect their thoughts; Jamie took
advantage of the lull to munch on her Shepard's Pie. “Seems like I’m
always eating with you guys,” she mumbled between bites. Kathryn didn’t
answer. She sipped and pondered; a darkness crept into her blue eyes and
stretched into down her face.
"You know Jamie, I still don't know why you picked me for this
group. I mean, you're all so smart! James is a math whiz, Billy builds all
this high-tech equipment, the girl's a super-programmer at thirteen. You're
a Physicist. What am I? A failed actress! Oh yeah, I can run the Body
Double suit, give the customers what they want, but I didn't invent it,
design it, build it. If it breaks I can't even fix it! I like the idea of being in a
science project, but girl, I feel so blonde! How will know what to do? What
happens if something goes wrong? I don't have the brains to..." She hung
her head in her hands.
Jamie got up and came around to Kathryn's side of the booth and
sat next to her, putting her arm around the near-sobbing woman. "First of
all, brains and knowledge are two different things. You can't know
something unless you've first learned it. How many science courses did
you have in school? How many scientific books have you read?"
Kathryn said in a small voice, "None and none."
"There, how could you possibly know about gyroscopic
stabilization, evolution, or MIVI applications? How do you know that, if
you had studied these things, that you too wouldn't be a 'whiz'?"
Kathryn turned to look at Jamie. "I don't know. They never made
do any of that stuff at school."
"So, you could be a latent math genius, like James."
Kathryn brightened a little at this. "Then maybe I could talk to
him and not sound so dumb."
"Girlfriend, James would never think you're dumb, even if
mathematics never entered the conversation. He's not that type of boy.
Now, back to you. Did you realize that you were the first person to
experience that, I don't know what to call it--avatar embodiment?--back in
Kowloon Park..."
"How do you know I was the first?"
"I just do, don't worry about it. You were the first, and though it
was a bit scary because you had no control, it took a singly unique person
with the nascent ability to project fully into another reality to make it
happen. EveryMan and EveryWoman won't ever be able to conceive of
anything they can't touch or smell firsthand. Look around at all these
people. They are quite content to have a nightly beer, have sex three times
a week, watch the game, shop, and work all their lives at a job they can
walk through blindfolded, so they can look forward to retirement where

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they sit around and remember how good things used to be. There is nothing
more to their lives, and they are quite happy with that. Nothing to rock
their worldview, and that’s fine, no slight intended on my part. They live
life to its fullest, with the freedom to do what they care most about, but
don't suffer from a lack of intellectual stimulation because they have no
great intellectual aspirations. What we scientists and artists do just doesn’t
occur to them."
Kathryn thought for a minute. "That's so sad! When Leon was
alive, he and I would go to museums and shows, even if they were mostly
sims of exhibits or performances of the last century. I always thought it
was because Leon was much older and longed for his lost youth. But you
know, I don't think there were any real performances to see, even if we
wanted to."
"Right! What passes for art today is all rehash, redux, a poor
imitation of the classics. The virtual performance I stole Billy from, that
was a fifty-year-old show. Because of dysgenesis, few are interested in the
creative arts these days, and fewer are able to create it. Look at your last
job; you were the creative agent behind your clients' fantasies. Do you
think any of them would have enjoyed a Philip Glass concert more than
making love to a simulation of a human?"
"No, I can't see that happening."
"And that’s fine for them, it’s what gets them through the night,
but you are different. Your innate creativity, your talent to project yourself
convincingly into different worlds, and your latent abilities in any science
you wish to pursue make you ideal for our project. I researched you well
before I invaded the Kowloon Park space and tweaked it a bit to allow you
to become that Asian woman, not just play her."
Kathryn gave a subtle Oriental bow to Jamie, and grinned. "That
was a dirty trick, whatever you did, but I forgive you." She kissed Jamie in
the cheek. "Now that I think about it, that was pretty neat! I really felt like
a different person. Everything was so real!"
"I know it was. That's a minute taste of what Mobius Space will
be like, an real alternate reality, not just virtual space. Not a fantasy. You
can do this, better than any of us."
Jamie motioned to the bar wench for the bill. "Now, I have to get
going. Many things to do. You alright now?"
Kathryn smiled and nodded. "I guess so. I'll have to give it some
time."
"Good! We're on our way. Now let's go; as much as I love Santa
Monica, they're liable to pass some ordinance while we're sitting here
that'll make whatever we're doing illegal or taxable!"

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 Chapter 15
"We're coming up on twenty-five minutes after the hour here on
the Intra-Global News Network. I'm Vapidia Wallace along with Fred
Mamry, thank you for joining us! Fred, that package on extending your
pet's life was fascinating. I'll bet there are millions of folks who'd like to
have their Fluffy or Rex live to be thirty, or even forty!"
"Yes, Vapidia, it's mind boggling what science can do. Speaking
of mind boggling, here's an update on that story we've been following for
several months. It seems that scientists are more certain about that meteor
that's supposed to hit the Moon within the next year or so. For more on this
story we turn to Earthman David Navarrro at JPL, the man with the triple-
R. Dave?"
"Thanks Fred. The meteor, or asteroid as scientists call it, has
been given the designation JMS 2031A to indicate the discoverer and the
year it was first seen. And if it hits the Moon as predicted, we here on
Planet Earth will be treated to a spectacular celestial fireworks show."
"Dave, is there any danger to us on Earth?"
"There is a slight chance that some fragments of the collision will
head towards us, but our atmosphere will protect us. They tell me that the
object is the size of Los Angeles and moving at tremendous speed. I have
the exact numbers here, but they are frankly numbers only a scientist could
appreciate."
"Wow! One more thing before we let you go. Are the scientists
going to do anything to try to stop the collision?"
"Well Vapidia, there is talk of some new kind of laser, but the
project is very hush hush. Something to do with new research I suppose.
Some military folks have suggested reviving the world's nuclear arsenals to
blow the asteroid from the sky. The committee responsible for oversight of
those weapons is chaired by minority leader Doltman (Republicrat). We'll
be keeping a close watch on these continuing stories for you."
"Thanks Dave! That was David Navarrro, our resident science
expert. Pretty interesting stuff, huh Fred?"
"Yes, but that's not the only interesting thing in the stars. The stars
of basketball showed up today..."
_______________________________________________

And so, with the approach of winter, the worked commenced in a

world oblivious. Jamie gently but firmly guided her team in their
researches, even though their growing fascination with the project would
have been motivation enough. She also kept an eye on this disturbing
revived interest in nuclear weapons, something she had not anticipated.
However, she attributed this lapse to her dealing with the many changes

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she’d been through the past couple of years, and concentrated on the task at
hand.
Billy and James communicated frequently about the theory and
the technology. The mathematician frequently went off subject and asked
Billy about his music. James was no musician but had a love for the art,
both modern and classical. Though he had been born several years after
The Wall was first performed, James found it to be the most interesting
period piece from the late 20th century, pretty much the last large-scale
work of the genre. For his part Billy became more interested in James’
mathematics. As an engineer he was of course facile with numbers, but the
theory behind his formulas was usually necessary only in school. Now he
found that understanding the principles aided his designs more than he had
imagined. When he communicated this to Jamie on one of their frequent
visits she was doubly glad: not only was the preliminary work progressing,
but this cross-disciplinary interest hinted at the first stirrings of gestalt
within the group.
She had also set up a tentative tutoring schedule for Sareena, at
first in a cyberspace classroom; later, when James had completed most of
his work he and Sareena would study face to face. Jamie created a virtual
space similar to the 'diner' where the group had its first meeting, although
incongruously there was a whiteboard and pair of tablet computers
installed in the booth. And this diner never had any customers other than
the teacher and his pupil. The waitress kept them supplied with
refreshments, and with the sea as their backdrop James taught Sareena the
basics of super-valued numerical methods. It was a tribute to James' skill
as a teacher, Sareena's innate abilities, and to the fact that when the student
has curiosity and an open mind, higher mathematics isn't as arcane as most
people believe it is. Of course, the operative term is 'most people'; this
teenager was not 'most people'.
They started with a review of logarithms, series, and how to
represent the former by the latter. Sareena's homework was to solve log
equations using series expansion, then translate the algorithms to code so
that any such problem could be addressed. Naturally there were such
programs in the public domain, but she had to code from scratch. Next she
was required to reduce the number of lines of code to a bare minimum and
still have the program run successfully. Later she would admit that this was
the more difficult task, as she had done practically no numerical analysis
writing, and relied upon canned routines for whatever math was required in
her Mom's business programs.
From logarithms they progressed to statistics; again this was
review for Sareena, except that she had never written programs to deal with
the subject. But she tackled every course of study he threw at her with
youthful enthusiasm. Jamie recognized before long that much of this

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industry on Sareena's part was to please her tutor. How she felt about this
added motivation she was not sure, and she couldn't devote much mulling
time to it, so busy was she with her subtle but essential
coordination/supervision of the project and all of its logistics. Eventually
she just shrugged and was grateful for the progress Sareena was making.
Better and better the student got at translating math to code,
conquering calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, and lastly fractal
compression theory. Perhaps conquering isn't quite the correct term.
Because of the methods James employed in his teaching, Sareena learned
just enough about the math to write her translations; she lacked the
background of derivation and study to fully understand just what she was
doing. That was not the point however; her job was to act as an interpreter
for James, devising software to control the devices Billy would design.
Eventually the rudimentary lessons would be over, and meeting
virtually would not be the best way to teach (or learn) the hugely more
complicated Exalog methods James would use to solve the Mobius Space
problem. The virtual method of one-on-one teaching was a little
disconcerting; the immediacy of the feedback from his student was far
different from the videogame-like quality of virtual lecturing. James
marveled at Sareena's sense of place and total ease in their diner/studyhall,
but he felt there was something missing. His MIVI interface just didn't
convey all the signals a human body gives, like subtle body language or
subvocalizations--although that might be due to his lack of command of
the technology. To him his student seemed very close to real, but he felt as
if he was manipulating a puppet of himself. Not the best environment to
teach that which he was just figuring out for the first time!
This challenge occupied all his time away from the tutoring. He
and the omnipresent Bugger walked and worked everyday once the school
granted him a highly irregular mid-semester sabbatical leave. That Jamie
must have some influence, he thought, to pull that off. The truth was, the
other math professors were clamoring to teach his tensor analysis seminar,
so everyone was happy, including the students, as much grade inflation
resulted to compensate for the change of instructors midstream.
He soon discovered that the super-valued possibilities were only a
small fraction of all possibilities, because the initial conjecture was loosely
premised on the number of particles in the universe. This 1080 was only the
number of optically visible particles; dark matter increased this number
twenty-fold, and the associated dark energy augmented the degrees of
freedom. After many consultations with living physicists, and the new
computer simulacrums of deceased ones (useful for background but
unreliable for extrapolation), James realized that manipulation of dark
energy was the key. This one-third of extant substance could be channeled,
funneled by means of Zero-Point Potentials, something that had been

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already partially explored. James concluded after about six weeks that a
central ZPP generator, properly driven, could direct dark energy photons to
squeeze Mobius Manifolds at will. But what a hugely, vastly complicated
set of controls it would require! If it weren't for his Exalog algorithms this
would be impossible with any existing technology, much less something so
rudimentary as MIVI.
He had been updating Jamie regularly over the month and a half;
she even joined him on the occasional forest walk, filling him in on some
of the Physics. However, when he finally put it all together he couldn't wait
to tell her. As if on cue, Jamie drove up the morning he was going to call
her. She was dressed in a loose fitting blouse and long skirt, all covered by
a shawl, very much in fashion that winter. She also had a small interface
box on her belt. James didn't inquire of that, though it didn't look like a
common network connector.
"And they say there's no such thing as synchronicity! Good to see
you my dear!" He gave her what had become their greeting hug. "I was just
going to call you. My part of our little project just came together."
"I knew you could do it!" and she stood on her toes to give him an
auntly kiss on the cheek. "Fill me in."
Which he did over coke, coffee, and something he invented called
Breakfast Pizza, although it was near noon. He wrapped up an hour later,
after a few insightful questions from Jamie, with "Don't ask me how on
Earth Sareena will put this into code, or how Billy will interface MIVI with
a ZPP generator. More to the point, where will you get the funds for a
ZPPG? There are only about a dozen around the world, all in fulltime use.
And they cost beaucoup bucks."
"Not your worry, my dear boy..." (James always had to grin when
this young woman called him 'my dear boy') "...As you might have
guessed, I have friends in high places. Now that I know what we need I'll
call in some favors. I'm sure we can piggyback on, say, the Berkeley
ZPPG. I know Professor Vong, the woman in charge there at the Lawrence
Berkeley Labs, very well. As for Sareena, you've reported that she's
progressing rapidly. Can she handle it?"
"I'd have to say yes, based on what I've seen of her. She's quite
amazing, far superior to anyone I have taught at UVa. But this virtual diner
thing won't do. It just won’t do! I'll have to go to Hong Kong to properly
guide her through this crazy math. Boy! That’ll be a total mindblow for
her. It's so much more theoretical and involved. I have gigabytes of notes
alone. Teaching it will be bitch and a half. How can a schoolgirl have that
much time to learn this, along with everything else she has to do?"
Jamie looked thoughtful. "We'll have to be creative," she said
conspiratorially as she rose. "But now I have places to go, people to see.
James, you've not disappointed. In fact, it took you less time that I thought.

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Congratulations again. And an early Happy New Year!" Hug. "Get some
sleep, then start packing. I'll find get your tickets and a nice place for you
to stay in Kowloon. But we're on our way!"

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 Chapter 16
Unbeknownst to James during what came to be celebrated as the
Breakfast Pizza Colloquium, Jamie was not alone: Kathryn was along for
the ride during one of her early hitchhiking sessions.
Soon after the women met in the English Pub in Santa Monica,
Jamie set up a small workspace up in the San Fernando Valley where she
could begin to train Kathryn in the art and science of hitch-hiking. Even
though Kathryn was an expert with a Body Double, she would need
extensive re-education to accept the feedback from a human brain.
Jamie developed the concept of hitchhiking shortly after she met
with Billy a second time, when he was back in Santa Cruz. She'd started
toying with the idea after Billy briefed her on the theory and designs
behind MIVI, and it seemed a logical extension of the technology. It was
when she was casting about for something to engage Kathryn that Jamie
decided to pursue her idea. She went back to Billy--who was frankly sitting
around bored, having finished up his loose ends at GameChamp rather
quickly--with what she wanted and the basics of the interface
specifications. The engineer was eager to do something useful while he
waited to employ Sareena's software drivers, so he started researching the
med-tech archives for EEG feedback chips that he could adapt to his MIVI
gear.
The season was changing as best it could in Southern California
as they got started. Once the Santa Ana winds died away the storms from
the Gulf of Alaska that were beginning to pound the Northwest spun off
enough moisture to wet the Southland occasionally. This gave local
weather forecasters something to talk about, though "Stormwatch 2032"
overstated the ½ inch of precipitation a bit. Jamie and Kathryn dodged the
reticent raindrops as they traversed the valleys and basin in search of
"stuff".
The women spent a lot of time together assembling the Studio, as
they called it. Aside from gathering some basic equipment that would
handle MIVI, they decorated the workspace with comfortable furniture and
objects d'art. They joked about how the men on the team would comment
on the various non-utilitarian aspects of their studio. Well, this wasn't to be
the main installation of the Mobius Technology; it was a side project, just
for them, so the hell with masculine pragmatism!
Their facility was located below the Verdugo Hills north of
Burbank proper, far enough from the airport so that the planes didn't buzz
too closely overhead. It wasn't too big, spacious enough though, with
ample network bandwidth and power. Jamie's credit seemed bottomless, so
in addition to the equipment they had bought plenty of plants, both real and
artificial, comfy chairs and sofas, some great throw rugs, elegant but

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simple office furniture, and a few Southwestern style fabric wall hangings.
Later, when they'd be working with the Mobius Technology that would be
built near Berkeley, this studio would serve as a remote site. But for now it
was their 'secret' clubhouse. Jamie, a woman who seemed to be
comfortable with anyone, was especially open with Kathryn, perhaps
because she reminded her of someone special. Though there were some
things that she couldn't reveal, Jamie had a feeling she could trust Kathryn
with anything.
During this time Kathryn dropped some not-so-subtle inquiries
about James that her friend deflected with vague answers. Jamie had no
experience or talent in matchmaking and was not about to head down a
one-way street with no outlet. Kathryn was not persistent though, and let
the matter drop whenever her investigation was thwarted. Mostly they
talked about film and theatre, the state of the world and the years of
prosperity under a hands-off government, despite the general population's
disinterest in anything intellectual. It was during these conversation, and
thoughtful hours alone, that Kathryn came to realize that she was different
from EveryWoman.
The actress turned consort turned sex surrogate turned pilot began
to lose her insecurity about working with science types. For all those years
in school and with Leon she had never played dumb; she just had never
exercised her innate reasoning skills to any extent. While the women
painted and wired their studio Jamie explained many of the theoretical and
technical aspects of the Mobius project, and explained them in a clear and
logical way. Gee, Physics isn't so difficult after all! She must have been a
hell of a teacher Kathryn thought. And so young! Can't be experience, must
be raw talent, although Kathryn suspected that there was some deep dark
and very telling secret that Jamie was hiding. Every once in a while she did
something that spoke of a person of many years, like in the way she spoke
about a film obviously released decades before she was born. And how,
occasionally she did something decidedly unfeminine; a comment on the
figure of a woman, something like that. And though she was slender she
definitely had a man's appetite; Jamie was always munching on something!
No matter. In the weeks that they worked until Billy could deliver
the hitchhiking MIVI gear Kathryn had grown close to Jamie, felt like she
could trust her to the ends of the Earth.
Billy delivered version 1.0 of his contraption, which he dubbed
irreverently the Virtual Thumb, about three weeks after Jamie made her
request, driving down from Santa Cruz in his Jeep to personally deliver it.
Truth to tell, he could have shipped the unit, but apparently there was a
young lady in LA who required his company. On whether this liaison had
sped development of the Virtual Thumb along Jamie would not speculate.

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 The hitchhiker's interface to the Thumb was not much different
than a standard MIVI headset, suitable for riding along with someone else's
avatar; later, version 2.0 would include a full body suit for hitching in the
Real World. For the driver, the interface was much more complicated, and
2.0 would a bit physically intrusive, necessarily tuned to Jamie's
physiology. Her unit included a splitter, to send identical signals to both
women, and an EEG feedback transponder so Kathryn could begin to get a
sense of Jamie's reactions to stimuli. (She was happy not to have to shave
her head like Billy for the newer EEG sensors!) The hitchhiker had to
become familiar with these autonomic signals so that when she later
received more elaborate telemetry in the body suit, and eventually the 3.0
implants, she could interpret it correctly.
Jamie felt that this little project was a good introduction to the
gear that would be forthcoming with the Mobius Space technology. Maybe
they all should try it, she thought, before each team member dons the MS
gear. Then again, maybe not. How could Billy understand, how would
James handle, the telemetry from a female? Some sensations were pretty
close, but others would be totally foreign. Might be a good learning
experience, but it might be a little too intimate for comfort. Somehow
Jamie didn't mind Kathryn sharing her experiences at such a fundamental
level, but Billy? Nah. James? Definitely not! Even Sareena, female but still
a child really, might not be a good candidate.
It was after a couple of days of tuning the equipment that Kathryn
received her first feedback from Jamie while the latter was virtually
visiting a Cyberpark, a neutral and innocuous place for testing the Thumb.
After some tweaking they got an A/V connection between them. For Jamie
it was a typical virtual outing, despite the knowledge that someone was
along for the ride. For Kathryn however, it was a decidedly a different
experience than the familiar NetSpace foray. Later when asked to describe
it, she had a hard time putting it into words. Normally when one projects
an avatar into a virtual space there is a sense of place and a strong sense of
control. The audio data was nominal since the two women had similar
aural abilities, but she felt dizzy every time Jamie turned to 'look' at
something; Kathryn guessed that her brain anticipated a change of view,
and when it happened without warning her senses reacted strangely, like
suddenly falling then quickly stopping. One experiences this weirdness in a
dream, but the telemetry from Jamie was more vivid than any dream.
Jamie decided than an environment where there's a lot of
stimulus, like walking through a crowded virtual park, was too much to
start with for Kathryn. She let her rider relax for a day, so as not to turn her
off from the sensation altogether. Their next trip was even more benign:
Jamie went to a virtual seacliff and sat watching the waves. This was much
easier for Kathryn to take; the scene was from the hills behind Leo Carrillo

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State Park north of Malibu. Jamie allowed her gaze to drift slowly from the
breakers, to the cars along California 1, to the campers in the park, and
back to the open sea. Kathryn's mind was less inclined this time to fight the
sensation of looking through someone else's eyes, and her feedback
telemetry told Jamie that she was much more calm than their first outing.
Another day of rest and dalliance and adjusting the gear, then
Jamie and Kathryn were off on another hitchhiking excursion, this time to
a virtual art museum. These had become popular since the general
population had lost any interest in examining the works of Van Gogh or
Diego in person. Jamie had dialed in an almost empty hall, but there were a
few other visitors from around the world, real people visiting via an avatar.
This provided some unscripted input for the hitchhiker, but Jamie was sure
to not move quickly or look at too many paintings at once.
As the days went by the pair visited increasingly animated Net
spaces; a shopping arcade, a drive in the country, then the city, and finally,
just before Billy's 2.0 Thumb showed up, the two-as-one went to a Kate
Bush replay concert at the virtual Hammersmith Odeon. Kate Bush was a
personal favorite of Jamie, and amazingly, even though the telemetry to
Kathryn was strictly A/V, the latter began to experience some of the
emotional responses of her guide. When the singer performed "England,
My Lionheart", Jamie was moved to tears (not her avatar, of course!), but it
was Kathryn's eyes that moistened from Jamie's emotional reaction to the
song.
All these sensations were necessary, even the initial dizziness, to
acclimate Kathryn to the Thumb and eventually the Mobius Technology,
and the whole otherworldliness that these devices provided. The panic she
felt when she had been trapped as the Asian woman would be nothing
compared with the full-body input from the 2.0 Thumb, unless she adjusted
gradually. Thumb 1.0 definitely helped, but now it was time to fish or cut
bait.
The suit Billy brought fit Jamie very snugly, and in some cases
intrusively, and was loaded with the latest biosensors. It was therefore
designed to be worn for only short periods of time. Version 3.0 would be
ready soon, and was far more portable, using implants instead of surface
sensors. The idea behind the suit was twofold: the Thumb had to record the
entire repertoire of the wearer's physiological responses to all situations, no
small feat, and something an EEG transponder couldn't possibly
accommodate. And after this process was complete and Kathryn had
become familiar with the input from 2.0, less bandwidth would be
necessary to transmit the reaction data. Kathryn's interface was almost all
head mounted, stimulating by induction the appropriate brain centers. It
was connected via a peripheral box to the studio's computer running an
upgraded version of MIVI.

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 When Kathryn played the Body Double (it seemed like years
ago!) she had a feedback suit and EEG, ocular, and aural inputs, but there
was never any question that she was running a machine. The first time she
and Jamie were connected the sensation was frightening! There was an
overwhelming sense of being helplessly and remorselessly shifted in time
and space. After years of living in your own skin you become used to the
signals your eyes, ears, nose, nerves give you. When Jamie opened her
eyes Kathryn realized that Thumb 1.0 was much closer to regular Net
experiences than this. Focus, reaction to color, even light intensity were all
hugely different. She heard sounds differently, felt heat differently; her
saliva tasted strange. Everything, from the moisture on Jamie's lips to the
various aches and pains every body exhibits, filled Kathryn's mind. She
thought it would take weeks to get used to this.
The two-as-one spent an entire day just sitting, stretching, walking
around the studio, eating, talking, even singing, in slow, easy stages. When
it came time to disconnect the reversion to Kathryn proper was almost as
jolting. Afterwards the women talked and talked about the Kathryn's
sensations and reactions; the inherent communication abilities woman have
were essential to sorting out this intensely emotional and very intimate
experience. Not even lovers know their mates to the extent that the
hitchhiker knows the driver; it was effectively a co-existence of two people
in one body. Jamie, a woman with an unflinchingly strong personality,
found that her ego was threatened by this invasion of her body. Kathryn
felt the opposite; her sense of self diminished during the connection. These
issues needed to be resolved before they could move on, so they talked and
shared while they tuned and tweaked the gear. In the end however, Jamie's
strong will and Kathryn's innate ability to accept other realities proved to
be more important than the Thumb technology itself.
After two weeks of trivial but essential co-existence training Billy
brought the 3.0 implants. These were very small subdermal devices
painless inserted in various areas of Jamie's body, networked via her skin's
natural galvanic properties to a transponder she wore on her belt. The
sensors were good for several months of operation, after which time they
would dissolve harmlessly. They had been used for years to monitor
patients, but Billy modified them for faster response time and greater
bandwidth. The transponder was also a Derricks original, adjusted to
encode the sensors' data for the Thumb receiver. Now that Kathryn was
attuned to Jamie's data-stream, the microsensors provided just enough
information for the hitch-hiker, conserving bandwidth, with Kathryn's
brain and the Thumb's memory filling in the details.
For their first test flight Jamie decided to walk to a nearby library.
There the sensory would be manageable, and it would provide an
interesting challenge to see if Kathryn retained the information Jamie read.

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This proved to be a partial success; Kathryn was by now quite comfortable
letting Jamie drive, enjoying the warm California winter sun on her face,
the wet winter winds in her hair, the click of her boots on the sidewalk, and
the flexing of Jamie's strong legs. However, Jamie read at a considerably
faster rate than Kathryn, so the retention aspect of the test didn't quite work
out. But the two had gotten over the trauma of the threat to their
individualities, and though Jamie had only the intellectual knowledge of
another along with for the ride, Kathryn really felt like she had just visited
a library. She had sublimated the lack of control of "her" body into the
feelings she had when engrossed in a role back in college. Then, after all
the study and rehearsal, the actress knew her part intimately, and her lines,
her movements around the stage, her reactions to other actors seemed to be
controlled by her character, not by herself. It had become almost natural to
her, hitching along with Jamie.
They were now the closest of sisters, closer than twins could ever
be, even when Kathryn removed her interface and returned to being
herself. And Jamie now knew that putting a male into the receiver end
would cause a huge ego problem for the man; there was just not enough
common ground for a proper connection. But the exposure was vital in
preparing Kathryn for the Mobius experiences to come, and after a few
more test runs the two women would be ready for some real trips.

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 Chapter 17
Imagine being recalled from the city council of the People's
Republic of Santa Monica for being too statist! Ever since the wave of
libertarianism swept through American politics after decades of a nanny
state, few local politicians were prone to intrude into the lives of the
citizens and their businesses. But there were exceptions, and the little town
west of Los Angeles seemed to attract them. There they still tried to
regulate what businesses could open, what their employees could or
couldn't wear, what they could charge their customers. They tried to
control what people could do in their cars; women even had been ticketed
for applying makeup, and when it was found that a few of these were
involved in the world's oldest profession, more ordinances, codes, and laws
were passed to govern consensual adult activity. Of course, the fines from
violations went to support the politicians.
And the citizens of Santa Monica put up with it, taking solace in
the location and beauty of their town, and being assured that all the laws
and regulations were for their own good. But when city councilman Al
Hinterland lobbied for a law that would limit bicycle speeds, with a rider to
charge fees to use the beach's bike path, long known as The Strand, the
people finally revolted, drew up a petition, and yanked Councilman
Hinterland from office.
What's an out-of-work ideologue supposed to do? He had come
from a long line public 'servants' who earned a living figuratively breaking
the legs of citizens then handing them a crutch and saying "See? What
would you do without me?" Long ago he had passed the Bar, really the
only bar he ever passed, spending his public earnings on libations for
himself and his less ambitious (but voting!) constituents. Now that he was
cut off from his marks in Santa Monica, he had to find something else to
justify his 'philosophy'.
He found a suitable clientele up in the San Fernando; he would
champion the disenfranchised, the unfortunate, the under-represented. Not
those hampered by physical impairments mind you, they were few and
largely self-sufficient anyway. Hinterland's training in the pubs of Santa
Monica had taught him that there were sufficient numbers of people who
seldom chose to work, if ever, and were easily led with the promise free
money taken from the evil rich via taxes. Enough people marching in front
of the TV camera might cow the weaker politicians of, say, North
Hollywood or Van Nuys or Burbank, into re-instituting some kind of
welfare program abandoned when Liberty Party members showed citizens
that freedom is more profitable than dependence.
And where would the money for this public dole come from? The
ambitious, the self-reliant, the intelligent. Two women scientists who

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seemed to have a bottomless bank account, for instance. Through his
contacts he had taken note of candidates for his 'evil rich' list, those who
trampled the 'little people' of the Valley without 'giving back' to society,
meaning Al Hinterland. The women were by no means alone, but the cost
of setting up their studio had flagged Jamie and Kathryn as, in Hinterland's
eyes, too wealthy to be allowed to keep their money. The fact that they
were involved in some kind of brainy research, judging from the
equipment they owned, and were secretive about it made them easy targets.
Ex-Councilman Hinterland always found it profitable to demonize the
intelligent in the eyes of the mundane, and these two would be no
exception.
Hinterland was not one to believe in synchronicity (unless, of
course, it endeared him to some potential constituents), but he had to admit
that it was portentous when his nephew Ernie rang him up right about this
time, looking very much the young Washington staffer.
"Hi Uncle Al! How are things on the Left Coast?"
"Ernie, you dog! Things aren't too bad. How's that congressman
of yours?"
"Fighting the good fight, as always."
“Well, we still have too many holdouts here, damned
Libertines..."
"Libertarians?"
"Yeah, whatever. Too many of them, whatever you call 'em.
They've got most people convinced that they don't need us. Ha! Damned
sheep! But I think I've got something to stir 'em up. You know Ernie,
always go back to basics. To get some political momentum going start with
a small vocal group of supporters, find something most people don't
understand, demonize it, then shout until they believe you."
"Funny you should mention that Uncle. I've been casting about for
something I can suggest to Congressman Doltman to get his career back in
the mainstream. That global warming stuff isn't panning out. No icecaps
are melting, no seacoasts are flooding. It’s stale, we need something new.
Got any ideas?"
"Ideas? Sure! Most people ignore what they don't understand, but
if you can make them afraid of it, you got a start. Now, I've found a couple
of pointy-headed scientist women up here in the Valley. They're up to
something; I've called in some favors in the county clerk's office, had 'em
check out licenses, permits, that sort of thing. I found out a lot about one of
them, and, get this, not a thing on the other. A total blank--that's suspicious
right there. And I got records of what they've bought for their lab. You
should see the equipment! Must be millions of dollars worth. Don't know
what it all does, but I'm sure I can find a law somewhere that'll show
they're doing something illegal. Maybe tax evasion, I don't know; not much

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in the way of taxes left here outside of my old domain. But hitting the
brainy types is always lucrative. Regular people resent those smug, smart
types, and I can make something out of that."
“Isn’t that just a little cynical?”
“Not at all. Most people are beginning to realize that too much
freedom means too much to think about. ‘What are those people doing?
What do they mean by research? How will it affect me?’ It gets in the way
of their personal lives, wondering what new things might be invented that
they’ll have to worry about. They’re moving back to wanting us in control
of their neighbors, and of their own personal and social lives. Most people
are happier when someone else makes decisions for them anyway. It’s just
a matter of time before they abandon the Liberty Party, and we just have to
help them along.”
Back in DC, Ernie listened intently. Well, that makes sense, he
thought, soothing his already shrunken conscience. And for him, tax
evasion wouldn't do it. Maybe he could find some scientific thing that his
boss could turn into an issue. He remember reading how cloning freaked
the populace back in the early years of the century. "I hear you have an
industry that freezes people when they die. Think there's something in
that?"
"Naw, don't think so. Too local, and they've been doing that for
many years. If I get a chance I'll send someone up to Caltech. Lot's of
propeller-heads there. Maybe I can dig up something scary enough for you.
But you'll owe me!"
"No problem! If you can get something that'll get my boss going
we'll both get a good ride on his coattails.”
Don’t I know it! thought Hinterland, rubbing his sweaty hands in
anticipation.

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 Chapter 18
James met Sareena one last time in their classroom/diner by the
sea, at her request. He was constantly amazed by a student who just
couldn't get enough learning, who almost demanded 'teach me!' At school
he was lucky if students showed up for class at all, and the only time they
asked questions it was "what's going to be on the test?". He was used to the
resentment directed at him for asking them to demonstrate their 'mastery'
of trivial arithmetic. With Sareena he didn't need to administer tests; almost
every session she had gone beyond his assignment down some side road of
mathematics, just out of curiosity. Her proficiency was never in question.
In fact, it was because of one of these side roads that she requested one
more lesson before he temporarily relocated to Hong Kong.
James had grown almost comfortable with this virtual interaction
as he taught Sareena more and more of his mathematics. He still didn't
think it would ever replace real face-to-face meetings; he missed the
nuances that his MIVI interface didn't transmit or reproduce. But the
process didn't seem as alien as it once did. He donned his headset and
found himself sitting in the familiar diner, soda at the ready, waiting for his
student. She arrived through the virtual front door shortly.
"Hi James!" Sareena had to get comfortable calling her teacher by
his first name, as much as he had to get comfortable with tutoring in
NetSpace. She had adapted quickly however and showed characteristic
eagerness to meet with her professor. James reflected how having just one
exceptional student made up for all the hundreds of, frankly, dolts who
play-acted at learning. Maybe this was more evidence of Jamie's ultimate
bifurcation of humanity.
Sareena had developed, on her own, a new technique for
compressing the enormous numbers. It had come about from the patterns
of coding programmers fall into; the algorithms, recursions and loops
suggest almost a rhythm, a beat to code to. She had sensed such a beat in
her assignments and had written a fledgling treatise on it. James studied
this while Sareena sat quietly, sipping on a cherry soda, alternately looking
at her teacher and the ocean. He realized that, although it would break
down when applied to other mathematical problems, it was entirely
suitable for this application. It was one of many peculiar short-cuts that
occur when dealing with numbers, like rewriting the first two columns of a
3X3 matrix out to the right and multiplying diagonally to avoid the Method
of Minors; it worked fine but only for a 3X3. This trick was different: it
was new, as far as he knew, and it was developed by a fourteen-year old
girl! And although the treatment was not rigorous if written by a PhD, it
was remarkably mature coming from one so young.

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 "Excellent Sareena, excellent," he said at last. "With a little work
we could publish, once this project of Jamie's is done. I assume that peer-
reviewed journals will still be around then."
Sareena beamed at the praise. Publishing a paper with James for
all the world to see! The kids at school wouldn't understand, but they didn't
understand much anyway. "You really think so? I mean about the paper?"
"Sure! Your ideas aren't that much less sophisticated than my first
papers, and I didn't start publishing until I was around thirty. Like I say, we
have to wait until this big project is over, but I can see the implementation
of your ideas in our work. It's time to start on the new stuff, the math I've
been working on for the past six weeks. I can't really do it here in this
cyberdiner. Well, I could I guess, but I wouldn't like it."
Sareena sat sipping on her soda. In all her lessons she had been
respectful, eager but focused on her lessons. Now she asked, "James, do
you have a girlfriend?"
James was taken aback by the question, but didn't show it. "No,
not for a while."
"Why?"
A touchy subject, especially when talking to a child. A very
mature girl, but barely out of childhood. "Because most girls don't seem to
be impressed by thinking as by other things. I don't know..." The non-
sequitor question and the subject matter caught him off guard and it
showed.
Sareena picked up on it. "Oh. Sorry."
"Not a problem," he said. Best to stick to math. "Do you think
you're ready for the hard stuff?"
"Ouch! This was hard enough! You guys got a lot of faith in me."
"I'll let you in on a secret. Most of my undergraduate students, and
even some of my grads, don't understand as much as you do. And I'd bet
none could have been brought up to speed so quickly. And coding all this
math from scratch as well? As they used to say back in the day: 'fahget
aboudit'."
"Well, thanks. I'll do my best. I think I've reached the end of what
I can hand-code though. Once I learn a little about your new theories, I
think I'll have to use an evolving program. I'll set up some digital DNA
based around your math and some animal parameters, like a shark. You
know, something that evolves to do just one thing. Then we'll see what
happens."
Sareena paused for a minute. "I like smart guys," she said
hopefully, "most of the boys at my school are awful dumb though. But
there must be some bright men like you in the world."
James laughed at the use of the word 'men' by such a young girl.
"Men, huh? Well, I know I can't be the only smart man in the world! Think

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of Billy, for one; he's a brilliant engineer and a great musician." James
reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure you'll run into a boy
your age who can keep up with you."
"Well, maybe." Wow! He was touching her! She struggled not to
show her excitement. "There are some guys online who are pretty smart;
but not as brilliant as you!"
James dissembled. "Give 'em time." He gently removed his hand;
Sareena hide her disappointment by changing the subject.
"One guy in NetSpace was telling me that there are people in the
States who want to blow up the asteroid with nuclear weapons. Have you
heard anything about this?"
James thought for a moment, about all he had read of nuclear
weapons, of what he knew about the Physics of asteroidal impacts, and of
what Jamie had said at that first meeting.
“Naw, I don’t think that anyone with any political power would
be foolish enough to resurrect those monsters from the 20th Century.
Maybe if they were assembled in space—no, not even then. Too
dangerous, and probably not efficacious.”
“Effy kay shous?”
“Useful under these circumstances. It looks like it’s up to us, or
some other friends of Jamie trying something different.” He finished his
cola, still amazed that it had taste, more amazed that is never made him
pee. “So, you keep working on your programs. I have some things to clean
up in the US. And don’t lose that thesis you’ve written! I’m serious; when
this thing is over we’ll get it published.”
As James waved good-bye walking out the virtual door wheels
started to turn in Sareena’s head.

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 Chapter 19
What my boss needs, thought Ernie Martirez, is a dragon to slay,
just like King Arthur. (The fact that real dragons never existed and that,
even in legend the son of Uthor Pendragon never encountered such a
monster, didn't occur to him, product of government schools that he was.)
All those Knights of the Round Table, including those who opposed Arthur,
were suitably impressed when he presented them with the beast's head.
This was exactly what he needed, something to first scare the pants off the
populace, then be saved by Doltman's crusade. Even better, another
Crusade, just like the king of Avalon!
Ernie's Uncle Al had done some digging, snooped around a bit,
called in a favor or two, and had emailed him the name of a dissatisfied
employee at CalTech. This woman had for many years been very
influential in the hiring (never firing) of employees. How Ginny Cesar had
risen to a position of power with only a degree in Physical Education was
never scrutinized, for those were the times of political correctness, and
such an inquiry could be, would be labeled racist, sexist, elitist, or some
other Ist administrators were terrified of.
For years she controlled the interview process. Ginny delineated
who would be invited, who could be on the screening committee, what
training they needed to have to be in the committee, who could ask what
question when--essentially lording over the whole process. She even had
the President's ear and recommended candidates based on the melanin
content of their skin, or if they lacked a Y chromosome. As a result, for
some time, certain programs at CalTech suffered greatly, even bringing
down the wrath of the California Accreditation Board onto the school.
When it was discovered that Ginny had been "enhancing for clarity's sake"
the resumes and supporting letters for certain applicants, plagiarizing
papers and forging signatures, the school reassigned her to another, far less
powerful position--she couldn't, as a union employee, be fired--and slowly
repaired the damage of no-merit based hiring.
So Ms. Cesar, a diminutive and prunish woman given to too much
make-up, had fumed in the maintenance department for many years, and
was now approaching retirement. She didn't want to just fade away without
so much as a whimper however; oh no, she was going to raise some hell on
those insensitive elitist bastards who hired faculty on the basis of--gasp!--
experience and intelligence. She had spent years digging up dirt on ever
project, every professor and researcher of whom she hadn't approved, and
she had a big file. She understood very little of what anyone was doing
there at CalTech, but it sounded important and highbrow, and she was sure
it wasn't socially sensitive. But what to do with this dirt?

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 Her chance came when a friend of the brother of a colleague who
knew an ex-assistant to a former councilman of Santa Monica who was
reported to have a nephew who was a staffer to an important congressman
rumored that he (one Ernie Martirez) was looking for just such dirt. She
received word via this rather tenuous grapevine that if some suspicious
activity at CalTech were to be reported to the proper authorities certain
politicians would be very grateful and could arrange a small honorarium
for fulfilling her civic duty. All this and revenge too! She couldn't let this
opportunity slip by.
In all her years at CalTech, in power and in shame, she had built
up a network of a few fellow employees (workers might be too strong a
term) disenchanted with their position. Their union assured them of
increasing wages for decreasing responsibilities, and in truth most of this
small but vocal group lived quite well and didn't have much reason to
complain. A few however were always going to bitch about something,
always resentful of people who had more than they: in short, typical
supporters of Al Hinterland.
It was at a union-mandated employee self-esteem workshop and
retreat in Big Bear that one such malcontent muttered to Ginny about his
burden of a weekly software backup (his only real task, under union rules)
for that damned research team up in the Owens Valley. What the hell could
they be working on up there that was so important that they required
weekly backups? Something about getting energy from nothing at all.
Bullshit! Probably doing nothing but running off to Mammoth to ski or
fish, giving him make-work so that it seemed like they're very busy.
To Ginny the very idea that power could come from nothing, from
empty space, sounded like a scam some pointy-headed scientists would use
on the under-represented to keep them oppressed. This was something to
check up on! She knew she couldn't understand any of the alleged theories,
but she knew that politicians like Hinterland were real smart; all she had to
do was to get access to this information to the former councilman. He
could pass it on to Martirez, making sure that he knew the source and who
deserved the credit (and the honorarium).
Thus Ernie came to learn about ZPEXRL (sounded like a code
word to him, something to use later) and the reason it was being built. He
knew about the potential lunar impactor, but he thought that would happen
after the next election and therefore was below his personal radar. So what
if the Moon got another crater? It was riddled with holes anyway. There
was only a tiny research staff there, and they could be evacuated long
before that thing hit. Might even wreck that waste of private investment
capital up there anyway.
However, the fact that some scientists were worried about the
strike did interest him. Scientists were always thinking about things most

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normal people didn't care about. But the news reports had been picking up
on this a little. Also, some military brass had expressed opinions on that
big flying rock, privately, and on a few talk shows. If he could work this
impact issue into something big, like his father's generation had worked
that Global Warming stuff, and if he could think of some governmental
solution to this "problem", something expensive, something with many
potential political favors and kickbacks--well! His boss would rocket to the
forefront of the Republicratic Party with Ernie tagging along close behind.
There might even be something in it for his uncle. Hinterland could make
political hay out of a shift in public opinion away from scientists and their
foolishness. Uncle Al could easily start an inquiry into those women he
mentioned--tax evasion, ordinance violation, something--that could get
him back into office where he could do some good for regular folks.
It was time for Ernie to make a proposal to his Congressman, a
suggestion with just enough information to fire up his boss while making
him think it was his idea in the first place (without cutting out his staffer).
Time to make connections, to spread rumors, to leak stories that would
crank up the fear factory. Start with the tabloid press, then progress to
exposé programs on the cable channels. "Unregulated science threatens the
masses", that was the angle. Only the government could help you.
Deregulation of their lives had been a burden for them. “Put government
back in control and it'll take care of you.” The Republicrats need to regain
power.
He would also clandestinely propose to the major news network
people that their time would come again if they got on board early.
Decentralization of power had made them almost superfluous, and the old
network anchors could become powerful allies. Scientists had done much
to displace them, too, what with instant access to unfiltered information
and news.
Yes, this could work, thought Ernie. A sly smile crept onto his
face, as he slicked his hair back. Leaning back in his soft government
chair, feet on his overly neat oak desk, he said aloud, “Arthur, I think I’ve
found you a dragon.”

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 Chapter 20
Jamie and Kathryn's first long 'trip' was to visit Billy, who had
returned to Santa Cruz after visiting his lady friend in LA. Such a long
excursion required planning; Kathryn was so simpatico with Jamie that
their bodies' natural rhythms were synchronized. It was the boardinghouse
effect to the extreme, and even though only Jamie was really traveling
Kathryn had to plan as if she were too. She was immobile while
hitchhiking (to minimize external input) so she had to plan for her various
needs: eating, sleeping, "the call of nature", and the demands of hygiene.
Her brain could be fooled by the telemetry from Jamie that often reported
that such needs were satisfied, so she had to prepare.
Boy, she thought, when this little side project is over it'll be a
huge letdown. After her initial uncertainty she'd grown accustomed to the
co-existence, and the few times Jamie had left to handle some business
Kathryn missed it terribly. She'd been doing this hitching thing for just
over a month, but she was forgetting what it was like to be alone.
Early on Wednesday Jamie took the mag-train up the coast to
Santa Cruz: extravagant but much more enjoyable that driving or flying.
Geothermal and co-generation plants along the coast provided the
levitation power for the popular conveyance, built about ten years earlier
by a large international consortium. The autoroads that were beginning to
spring up in metropolitan areas had yet to extend much beyond the cities,
so those who preferred ground transport (and could afford it) took the mag-
train. It moved swiftly along the western slopes of the coastal range, and
the route occasionally offered views of the Pacific, gray from its winter
storms. She was staying only the day for Kathryn's sake; Jamie didn't
receive feedback from her hitchhiker, but she was always cognizant of her
presence, more than just intellectually.
Billy's house was close to the new station, and he and his beau
Leigh met Jamie in his truck. "What? The three of us won't fit on your
bike?" Jamie joked as they piled into the old 4X4--the winter rains made
motorbiking a damp experience. This truck must feel abandoned during the
Summer, she thought, as Billy's preference for his 'heavy iron' was clear.
"Nah, I gotta keep this battery charged somehow. 'Sides, the roads are
kinda slick around here this time of year. Jamie, this is Leigh. Leigh, this is
Jamie, the weird woman I've told you about."
"Weird hmm? Thanks a lot, Billy! Hi Leigh!" Jamie sized up
Leigh and deduced that this was the calmer and cooler of Billy's girlfriends
and less likely to give him grief about working closely with another
woman. She wondered if Amanda even knew about this project. Leigh was
tall and lean with outrageously long legs, a mixture of descendants from
several continents. Friendly and moderately bright, apparently. Billy was

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not the type of man to date bimbos, but he also was the type of man who
needed to feel smarter than his women. After all, he was smarter than 98%
of the people on this planet, so the pool of females smarter than he was
quite small.
They bumped along in the venerable old truck up the hill towards
the house. Billy kept a neat if Spartan house with a view of the ocean,
although he was not strictly on the beach. Some long-gone self-taught
architect had built the home during the 60s of local wood. It had two
stories organically hugging the slope and was encased by wild coastal
foliage. Few pieces of furniture graced its rooms. His workspace was the
largest part of the house, echoing a passing indulgence with the feng shui
art of positioning, equipped with the latest, the absolute latest, tools of his
trade, as well as some vintage gear and prize basses. This was Jamie's third
visit to his house, and every time she visited he had some new analyzer,
integrator, or signal processor. It was a tribute to Billy's expertise that he
could not only keep up with, but master each new piece of technology in
his field, and apply it to the task at hand in little more time than it took to
unpack it.
Today however, because of Leigh's presence, the three sat on his
deck, propane heaters burning, talking and drinking smoothies. After a bit
Leigh, who had been sitting quietly, got up and excused herself. Jamie
decided to drop her bombshell. "Kathryn's hitching with me today."
Billy's eyes went wide. "Really? Are you in there Kathryn?"
Jamie laughed. "Now you know it's a one-way communication!
She can't answer you, but she's feeling these words in her mouth, so if I say
'Hi Billy! How're you doing?' it's almost like she's saying it."
"Man, that's spooky! You know, when you had this crazy idea I
went along with it 'cause it sounded like something interesting to do, not
because I thought it would actually work, at least like this. So she's hearing
everything we say?"
"Yep, and everything I see, taste, every bump in that road up here,
even smelling Leigh's Chantilly. She even knows that I'll have to excuse
myself to the little girl's room in a few minutes, when Leigh gets back."
Billy thought for a moment. "You know, I wouldn't tell Leigh
about this. Man, it's just too weird, even for you."
"Gee, thanks."
"Aw, you know what I mean. I don't think I'd tell anyone when
you're doing this. It's too much like being bugged."
Jamie saw Billy's point and had to agree. When Billy's girlfriend
returned she excused herself as planned. (Planned was the word, for back
in Burbank Kathryn unplugged and took care of business herself.) Later,
after they had all talked each other out and the day had waned, hunger
became an issue. Rather than make Billy cook, which he did very well,

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they decided to head into town for dinner. Jamie had planned to return to
Burbank that night, but she was having such a good time with the couple
that she accepted Billy's invitation to stay the night. Kathryn of course
knew this as well, and she decided to unplug after a while to reclaim her
individuality. However, she hung on until after dinner. She still found it
incredible to feel like you'd finished a delicious meal, yet not consumed
anything. What a diet plan! although dieting was never a necessity with her
slim figure. Curiosity got the better of her after a while, though, and she
reconnected with Jamie after an hour’s rest.
After dinner the trio went to a local club to listen to some music
and dance a bit. The music was performed by a holographic construct of a
group from the 1980's and recordings from the period. The group's
appearance changed to match the music: the Clash played Punk, Duran
Duran played New Wave, and Van Halen played power pop. It was a
testament to the times that too few were able to play music well enough to
assemble a listenable cover band.
Billy and Leigh danced a lot; with his impeccable sense of rhythm
he was easily the best dancer on the floor. Leigh was no slouch, though,
and her wispy figure complemented Billy's wiry contortions. Later Jamie
was coerced into dancing, something she wasn't keen to do. It took the
music of Oingo Boingo--Billy's request--to move her to her feet. After that
Phil Collins played a ballad and Billy danced a slow dance with Jamie,
who had to whisper "let Leigh see a little daylight between us please" to
the rakish engineer. She deduced that his closeness was half testosterone,
half a barb aimed at Leigh to force her to assert her territory later. A clever
man!
Jamie spent the night in Billy's guesthouse, a small bungalow
behind the main house. Typically, he had it filled with gear, but Leigh
helped her move enough stuff out of the way to make it livable. After
breakfast the next morning she took the train back to Burbank alone,
meaning Kathryn hadn't hitched along. She hadn't spent much time at
home the last few weeks and had to do a little housekeeping. Jamie needed
a day of rest also, so eager as they were, the two decided to meet the
following day to compare notes.
"What a wolf!" said Kathryn as she greeted Jamie in the studio the
next morning. "I can see why the ladies go for him."
"What? Oh, so you were connected during the slow dancing!”
Jamie grinned. “You know, he made the Boingo request to get me up there.
I'll bet he arranged that slow dance too. Sneak!"
"It was amazing though, riding along. The train, that bumpy truck
of his. I felt sweaty when you--we--danced. I could smell the BBQ sauce
from the ribs on his breath, and could tell he was getting turned on when

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we slow-danced. Wow! Maybe we could, you know, do it with
somebody?"
Jamie went ashen. "No, Kathryn, I can't be a Body Double for
you," she said slowly, "That would be the ultimate kiss-and-tell. I couldn't
do that. Besides, you might not like my choice of partners. We best stay
clear of that. Kinky idea though."
The former ecstasy guide immediately understood what she had
just asked her friend. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I just realized... I mean...that
would be a terrible invasion of privacy."
“Not at all." Jamie leaned over and hugged her girlfriend. "I feel I
know you so well that I can share almost anything with you. Almost
anything. I do need a few spaces only I can go," she laughed.
They spent the day debriefing and refining the hitchhiking
equipment, for their next big excursion was to the Breakfast Pizza
Colloquium. This time Jamie didn't let Kathryn hitch while she was
traveling to Virginia; only after she was driving the van along the road did
she allow her hitchhiker to thumb a ride. When questioned about this Jamie
just smiled, and Kathryn recognized that this was one of those spaces of
privacy Jamie referred to.
As per Billy's advice Jamie did not reveal her passenger to James.
They later both admitted to each other that they felt a little guilty about
this, Kathryn less so.
"Well, that was interesting. James' pizza confection was good!"
The two were relaxing at the studio, watching TV and going over their
reactions to their second excursion. It had been two weeks since Jamie
returned from Virginia, but much busy-ness had delayed anything more
than a cursory discussion until now. "I'm still amazed that I can taste
everything you eat. I think the more we use the Thumb the better it gets."
"That makes sense, on two levels. The more you use any tool the
better you get at it. But it also says that you’re moving toward being able to
do this for real, without technology. The rest of the team will follow in
your footsteps. And you thought you were out of your league with Billy
and James!"
Kathryn blushed. "Thanks. You know, Billy might be the ladies
man, but James is sweet. Will we ever work together? I mean, does his part
in this ever mesh with mine?"
"So! You do like James," said Jamie, "you don't hide it very well.
Well, he's a fine boy, but probably different from men you've known.
Always been kinda shy, more so lately. You see how reclusive he can be.
He's not a pack animal like most men are. And yes, we will all be working
together at some point."
Kathryn sipped her coffee. "I really haven't known many men.
Hah, it's sort of the opposite of the old biblical term. I've 'known' many

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men virtually through my old job, but gotten to know only Leon as a
person. And we were never intimate. Maybe we could visit James again? I
want to learn more about him, scope him out some more before I make my
move. I take it he won't be making any moves himself."
"No, he..." Jamie was distracted by something on the television.
"In his present state of mind...he won't...shit! I was afraid of this."

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 Chapter 21
"Vapidia Wallace is on assignment in the nation's capitol,
covering events unfolding on the floor of the house." The newsman's
demeanor had become suitably grave as he spoke of the centers of
government. As with most newsmedia types, Fred Mamry was still nursing
the wounds suffered when Liberty Party members achieved majority over
statist politicians. These days Liberty Party members did very little in
government other than untangling the web of intrusion woven by
Republicrats for almost a century. This provided little for ambulance-
chasing media to cover; moreover, it demoted them from newsmakers to
mere reporters. However, hope springs eternal, and whenever the strong
Republicrat minority made a big push for some legislation, Fred, Vapidia,
and their cronies were there, bursting with self-importance, ready to pour
gasoline on any little spark of renewed state power. "Vapidia?"
"Thank you Fred. In a moment minority leader Doltman from
New York will make a speech in support of the Earth Defense Bill, which
he's sponsored. As we've been reporting for the past few months, a wild
asteroid is fast approaching our Moon, and the potential for problems here
on Planet Earth are enormous. Fred, you yourself reported on the
impending catastrophe a few months back. Then you mentioned that some
secret group was working on some kind of super-laser. Congressman
Doltman thinks this is not enough, and will propose...wait…we now take
you to the floor of the House."
Minority leader Bruce Doltman was a portly man, thinning white
hair combed to cover the regions of his scalp where age spots were most
noticeable. He had been in Congress since the turn of the century, and had
trained his rubbery face reflect the expression du jour. Now his fleshy
cheeks, narrow eyes, and quivering chins preached "Repent, the end is
near!"
"My fellow Americans. As individuals we are born with nothing,
and we'll die taking nothing with us. As a country we came from nothing
but have, in 250 years, achieved greatness, although in the past few years
we may have lost ground." Doltman cast a telling glance at the majority
leader Browne. "But all our striving will be for naught. All that we've built
will be for nothing. All that we live for and believe and cherish will vanish
forever, because, if we allow our Moon to be destroyed, as a race, we
humans will have no future!"
He paused to assess the impact of his sermon. The press was
eating it up. Good! Time to crank it up a notch. "My sources tell me that,
because of this collision, the tides will be so altered that life on Earth will
be impossible. How can this be, you ask? As you may know, though I am

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not one to boast, I have training in the sciences, and I understand more than
most the grave problem facing us. Let me explain."
"The Moon, our satellite, exerts a force called gravity on all water
on the Earth. That is why we have tides in the ocean. You probably are
familiar with the term "tidal wave"; that is when the Moon pulls extra hard
on certain oceans, causing waves of mass destruction. What you probably
don't know is that your own human body is made up of mostly water, about
80%. Therefore, a collision on the Moon will have grave consequences for
us and for our children."
"This do-nothing government of the past two decades has left us
defenseless. This Laissez-Faire approach to life, this denial of the wisdom
of your leaders and their ability, their right to watch over their citizens, will
doom us."
"What is our fate? What will happen to you, your families, your
loved ones?" Doltman paused again; the Republicrat minority held its
collective breath, and the newsmedia were on the edge of their seats. What
the Congressman from New York said next might just start them on the
road back into power. If he spoke eloquently enough, if he could scare the
masses enough, if...here it comes:
"Anarchy, my friends! Anarchy, my fellow Americans! This loss
of control, this virulent deregulation, this unchecked lunge toward civil
liberty, this unrestrained dismantling of the Federal Establishment will
doom us to anarchy! When the Moon is hit by this asteroid, the effect on
humanity will one of wild loss of control. Rioting in the streets, madness in
our schools and churches, civil disobedience, even open warfare will ensue
because of the change in our natural body tides. Ask your local
policepersons about the havoc they see during a full moon, when tides are
high. Madness, my friends, madness and anarchy will be our apocalypse."
"Why do they call madness lunacy? The fact that the word lunacy
has a synonym--Moonstruck--isn't coincidence. Our Moon has been hit
before, and we've seen the result: the dark ages and the rise of paganism
and witchcraft. But we now know the scientific reason for these gross
social aberrations. When, after a strike on the Moon, the tides change, our
water balance is disrupted, creating disturbances in our brain which take
years to recover from."
"Yes, we know the reason. And we can predict our future. Can we
change it? Can we defend our Mother Earth and her children? I say YES!"
Thunderous applause erupted from the press corps, set up behind
the Congressional Minority Caucus, who whooped support for their leader
as loudly as any sports fan cheered for the home team hero. Chants of
"Dolt-man! Dolt-man!" echoed through the hall while the Liberty Party
majority looked at each other in half bemused/half alarmed consternation.

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The individual freedom they had advanced was under constant danger of
being whittled away by emotional appeals from “Nanny”.
When the cacophony died away the Congressman continued; "We
still, as our legacy from the last century, have enough destructive power to
blow up that cursed asteroid before it ever strikes our orbiting sister. I
myself chair the committee in charge of our own mothballed weapons. The
many more nuclear warheads still in armories around the world, and the
knowledge to quickly build more, can bring the planet's atomic strike force
up to sufficient strength to blast the Moon-killer from the skies. And we
still have plenty of missiles to deliver the knockout punch to the target.
Rockets tagged for research can be confiscated and reassigned to this
important mission. We can defend ourselves; we can save the future!"
More cheers from the minority party and their press corps. They
could almost feel the reins of power back in their hands. Way-to-go
Doltman!
"Some scientists," he sneered, "will tell you that this is a
dangerous plan. They'll tell you that there aren't enough bombs in the
Universe to get the job done. They'll say that such weapons should be
destroyed for all time. They want your children to die in the coming social
madness! I say, to Hell with them!"
More cheers. "My sources in the military assure me that there will
be plenty of explosives available, that they are perfectly safe, and that they
can get the job done. I don't trust those pointy-headed types to presume to
know more about explosives than our boys in uniform. Do you want to
trust your lives, and the lives of your children, to a bunch of academics?
Where were they when Nazism and Communism threatened us? Were they
on the front lines, dying for our government, our way of life? Never!"
Even more applause this time. Doltman grew quiet, then almost
whispered, "We must do this thing for our Mother, the Earth, and her
children, all her children, and all our children. We cannot leave our fate to
elitist scientists, intellectuals, and effete snobs who espouse personal
freedom and eschew government control." More loudly, "I ask that you
write or call your representative, senator, and our do-nothing president
today and demand that they give us the power to protect you and save the
Earth. I am not ashamed to beg this of you." Now, nearly shouting, fully
evangelical, "Indeed, I say loudly and proudly, speaking for all my
Republicrat colleagues, that we are from the government and we are here
to help you!"
_______________________________________________

James had stopped over in San Francisco on his way to visit the
Zero-Point Potential Generator at Cal Berkeley when, in the airport, he
heard Doltman's tirade. So this is what Sareena had heard about, more

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frightening than her report had indicated. He was incredulous at the gross
scientific fallacies and historical distortions purported in that speech, but
he fully understood how decades of educational decline would cause such
horribly wrong ideas to be readily accepted by Everyman and
EveryWoman. It took time to extract the tendrils of government from the
schools, more time than had elapsed since Liberty Party revolution of
2016. And virtually all voters had been educated in the state schools that
had dominated education for 130 years. The decline in critical thinking
skills had started around 130 years ago as well; gee, a connection? he
thought wryly. Fortunately, from around the turn of the century, freedom-
minded activists had wisely chosen to appeal to the voters' emotions
instead of their intellect, resulting in the Liberty Party win. But appealing
to the emotions was exactly what Congressman Doltman had done; what
damage could he and his specious policies inflict?
He did a back-of-the-envelope calculation from the asteroid
numbers as he remembered Jamie giving him back at that first meeting,
and concluded that he could think of nothing more dangerous than that
much explosive energy on top of hundreds of rockets. Except maybe the
loss of the Moon itself. But would this crazy scheme even get the job done?
He'd have to consult with Jamie on that. For now he had to get on to Cal
Berkeley and the LBL.
Dr. Vong was a very attractive woman, tall for an Asian, almost
athletic in stature, and certainly very young to head one of only a few
ZPPG installations on the planet. She had been alerted that James would be
dropping by; even though he was not directly involved with the
technology, he needed some sense of what would eventually be taking
place. Typical of her cultural heritage Dr. Vong dropped all she was doing
and gave James in VIP treatment, answering all his questions, not rushing
him through like some gaping tourist as she led him through the Lawrence
Berkeley Labs.
The ZPPG was quite impressive. Since Zero Point Potentials and
dark energy had been first postulated late in the last century much progress
had been made. (This certainly seemed to bear out Jamie's explanation that
once a new addition to reality is conceived it is implemented and accepted
by those who can understand it.) It could tap the unlimited energy reserves
locked in the fabric of space-time itself, in the process altering its curvature
and topology. Man, hooking Billy's equipment into this technology would
be wondrous! But what a job!
Later that day Billy drove up to Berkeley to meet with James.
They had spent much time on the phone, well, as much time as men are
likely to, and relished the opportunity to talk in person. The scientists had a
long, intense, bonding kind of discussion only guys can have as they
walked around the campus. Billy had already met Dr. Vong and gotten the

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I/O specs, not that he could do much with them until Sareena got the
drivers. But he could start to match protocols between the ZPPG interface
and MIVI; he was loathe to sit around idle.
It was a remarkably fruitful time for the two men. Whatever Billy
didn't understand about the theory James explained; things about the
technology the mathematician couldn't grasp the engineer cleared up for
him, and the two collaborated synergistically on the role the ZPPG would
play in this project. Billy remembered that Jamie predicted this would
happen, that the intellectual connection would be musical, for lack of a
better term. He couldn't wait until all of them were jamming this way.
Much later, long after the sun had disappeared behind the Golden
Gate, he convinced James to go to a bar he knew well from his grad school
days, one where intellectual involvement was not the primary form of
entertainment. The mathematician was resistance, but Billy was nothing if
not persuasive. Suffice to say that James was out of his element whereas
Billy was immersed in his. After a while he sat in with the blues band in
residence, losing himself in an old Elmore James song; this focused James
out of his bewilderment, at least until one of the local 'ladies' slid next to
the mathematician and started speaking in advanced Innuendo. With a silly
grin on his face (and four shots of Sauza tequila in his brain) James seemed
to be enjoying the company of the woman who called herself Freyda. But
from the stage Billy was observing the situation, and after the latest tune
had finished he excused himself and collared his friend.
"Jimmy," he whispered conspiratorially, "Freyda's not all the
woman she appears to be!"
"Humm?" he grunted, not turning away from the woman.
"You're gonna be in for some changes, man!"
Then Freyda stood up and gave Billy a dirty look. "Aw Billy, you
ruined the surprise!" she said in a strong baritone that shook James out of
his stupor. Billy grabbed him and dragged him from the club. The two
started laughing uncontrollably, practically crawling to Billy's truck. He
gave James a lift back to the airport motel where he was staying until the
flight to Hong Kong left, which gave the professor time to sober up enough
to find his room card. The men shook hands in a complicated fashion Billy
started, some secret code or something, and they parted, eager for the
project.
Both had forgotten the tirade from the floor of the House earlier
that day, but events would soon bring it back into their consciousness.

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PART III

Chapter 22
Some seeds take years to germinate. They lie dormant in the soil,
quietly counting the march of seasons, awaiting that exact set of conditions
that will trigger explosive growth. Such was the seed of fear and
resentment that lay quiescent in the subconscious of the general populace
for decades. From seniors who still believed that Buzz and Neil faked their
flight back in '69, to young adults who understood nothing about the
technology they used daily, EveryMan merely accepted that which science
did for them. It was, on the surface, an amiable half-duplex situation:
science gave and the masses took.
But all that time, from Edison to Gates and beyond, distrust in
things not understood had persisted. Rather than indulge their curiosity and
learn about Physics, Chemistry, Biology, most people staunchly defended
their right to remain ignorant, with great and widespread success. Easier to
believe in mythologies that promised great rewards for little investment.
Lotteries were ubiquitous, psychics had opened storefronts in every
neighborhood, and the mainstream media fed their viewers a steady diet of
implausibilities.
The exact set of conditions for the seed to sprout had occurred for
Congressman Bruce Doltman all the way down to Candidate for Burbank
Mayor Al Hinterland. Doltman's speech to Congress, put into heavy
rotation by the various sycophantic news anchors and pundits, had forced
fear of science to bloom.
_____________________________________

About a week after Doltman’s infamous speech James was in

Hong Kong tutoring Sareena. They were about done; the child prodigy
programmer had developed first generation drivers for Billy's MIVI gear
that surpassed anything anyone had seen before. It was as if James'
Exalogs had ignited something in the girl. Sareena coded constantly,
instinctively, developing software without any bugs at all, unheard of in
the history of programming. Her drivers would push the bounds of what
MIVI could do, if supplied by the power of a ZPPG. That was Billy's task:
to interface his equipment with such a device that Mobius Space was just a
synapse away. That particular synapse would be supplied by Kathryn, who
was hitching with Jamie as she flew on a hypersonic plane to Hong Kong.
It was quite evident to even an intensively focused mathematician
such as James that Sareena had developed an enormous crush on her tutor.
He was not at all experienced in dealing with teenagers, even though many,

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most, of his adult students acted like adolescents. And Sareena was
certainly more mature than most teenagers, in her dedication, ambition,
abilities, and socialization. But there was no doubt that she was,
tentatively, flirting with him.
There is something marvelously innocent about a young person in
love, virginal yet having nothing to do with sex, he thought. That first time
when you have no preconceptions or experiences to taint the feeling.
You've never been rebuffed, cuckold, or otherwise shat upon, all those
things that cause your guard to muffle the feeling of infatuation.
What to do about it, though? James was certainly not a pedophile,
yet he truly did like and admire Sareena. She would grow up to be quite a
woman, especially if this Greater World thing was a fact. He decided he
should treat Sareena with kindness and respect, but not encourage her or
play on her emotions. It also might be best if they were not alone together.
That would be easy; soon she would have the preliminary software
finished for Billy, and they would all be working as a team.
James remained friendly yet decently distant to her, and she didn't
seem to mind. Sareena spent every free minute with him, often in the
presence of her mother, with whom James got along famously. Why not?
Here was a world-class mathematician who had traveled halfway around
the world to privately tutor her daughter! The cover story from Jamie had
convinced her that this was a good thing--a privilege, an honor--but not
suspicious. And she knew her daughter was smitten, but she trusted them
both.
Jamie landed at Chek Lap Kok and took the new MTR to
Kowloon. For Kathryn, clandestinely hitching along (they still resolved not
to tell anyone), it was like closing a loop; this whole adventure had started
with a walk in Kowloon Park. And she was about to meet this young girl
James had been gushing over, really for the first time.
Kathryn wasn't sure how she felt about this. She had not
confessed this to Jamie, but she had begun to have erotic dreams about the
mathematician. Erotic dreams in and of themselves were odd for her.
Kathryn's career as a sexual surrogate had, rather than expand her libido,
actually turned her off to sex in the flesh. The desperate control her (mostly
male) clients needed to exert on their partners, their pitiful reliance on sex
for fulfillment, the dark corners of repression that hid in their minds, had
shut down her own desires for years. That and the fact that she and Leon
had had a wonderful relationship without intimacy for a decade reinforced
her distaste for coitus.
But as with many women in their thirties, Nature plays a dirty
trick. Call it a sense of personal freedom, a self-confidence that comes with
age, or some quirk of reproductive biology that says "time's a' wastin'":
women in their fourth decade become boys in their second, at least as far as

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sex goes. Cruel joke, because it's this time in their lives that men loose a
sustained interest in intimacy, sort of a "been there, done that" malaise that
sets in. Sex deteriorates from an obsession to merely an itch to scratch, at
least in most men, leaving their spouses much chagrinned.
Kathryn had been away from her job for several months now,
away from men in general. She had spent so much time with Jamie that her
needs for companionship, for someone to talk to and to share with, had
been handsomely met. Jamie wasn't like most women she knew; she
understood so much about Kathryn without being girly about it. And once
the hitch-hiking started, the sensation of knowing someone right down to
their physical responses to stimuli was almost like being in a deeply
romantic relationship. Almost.
For while she had by now hitched many times, she needed that
which her hormones demanded; a sexual relationship. James was the only
man she had met in the last few months, other than Billy. Her
mathematician (she was thinking possessively of him now, even if she had
only been near him via Jamie) was not like her clients. He was not
desperate, not controlling, anything but pitiful; didn't even seem interested
in sex. Well, she would change that!
But how did he feel about her? Moreover, how did she feel about
Sareena? The girl plainly had a crush on James; even the occasional video
calls she made to Jamie couldn't hide that. Just the way she uttered "James"
said it all. And he couldn't possibly think about the girl in that way, he was
too decent a fellow. At the same time, Kathryn saw something of herself in
Sareena, something that reminded her of her teenage years and the naiveté
she had had before the realities of life weighed so heavily on her.
This was going to be an interesting meeting she thought as she lay
on the couch back in the Burbank studio, simultaneously riding the train to
Kowloon.
_______________________________________________

Jamie had decided to physically rather than virtually travel to

Hong Kong to meet with the teacher and his student. Partly because she
had to convince Sareena's mother to let her daughter continue her studies at
Berkeley, where she was setting up shop, partly because she was so
concerned about this rapid change in public opinion fanned by Doltman
and his ilk. The former task alone was difficult enough. It was little more
than halfway through the year at Sareena's school, not enough time had
elapsed to lend the proper air of opportunity to this extraordinary education
the girl was receiving, and besides, her mother needed her to help with the
family business. Add to this that California was still far away, even in
2032, especially for a teen-ager.

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 However, these problems paled compared to the political urgency
now imposed on top of the impending lunar impact. For the first time in
this project Jamie was not sure how to proceed, found it difficult to focus, a
strange condition for her. She needed face-to-face input from James on the
subject. She had already talked to Billy about Doltman and the anti-
intellectual mood once again flowing from DC. The engineer was too into
the whole technology thing to think clearly about public relations; his
opinion didn't help. Of course Kathryn shared her own thoughts and
concerns, but what would James say? She didn't know, but she knew it
would be important. Jamie felt unnaturally indecisive, almost of two
minds.
The train from the airport to Kowloon had always been swift, but
ten years ago the steel rails had been replaced by a maglev system; now top
speed was limited only by the acceleration comfort level of the passengers.
Jamie's express arrived at the station fourteen minutes after leaving the
enormous Chek Lap Kok. Sareena and her teacher met her on the busy
platform and the girl ran to her with open arms. Startled, Jamie
preemptively gave the teenager a "Hollywood hug", bending at the waist.
Kathryn had once told her that was ostensibly to avoid wrinkling expensive
gowns, but in actuality it was to avoid breast contact with people not on the
"A" list. Besides, most Hollywood mammories were more silicone that
flesh and subject to damage. However, why she had backed off a bit from
Sareena's genuine affection mystified her: some forgotten reflex?
With Sareena watching nonplussed Jamie turned to give James an
embrace that had no trace of Hollywood in it. She felt relieved that he was
here; he'd have a solution. However, it was James' turn to be startled,
surprised by the warmth of her hug. Despite the fact that Jamie was a
number of years his junior, he'd come to think of her as an aunt. But there
was more overt femininity about her today. What was up?
He gently pulled away and the three stood there on the platform
for an awkward moment. Finally Jamie shook herself and said, "Well! I..."
She found she needed a minute to center herself. Teacher and student
watched in barely concealed amazement as a visible change came over the
woman.
A shiver overcame her suddenly, and after a moment Jamie
exclaimed, "Man! That flight must have gotten to me. Never did like public
transportation much. But you'd think I'd be used to it after all these years.
Anyway, how are you both doing? Sareena, did you expect that cute boy
again? Wouldn't be fair to James here; I don't have my van." This time she
winked and bent down to gave the teenager a decent hug, which seemed to
placate her.
She straightened. "James, my lad," --now that sounded like the old
Jamie-- "your reports on your student's progress indicate that we can go on

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to the next phase. While you've been here this past week Billy has found a
studio in Berkeley near the school and started assembling the outboard
gear. It's near enough to the ZPPG to tap into the output and far enough to
avoid curious students. Kathryn will stay in Burbank for a while..."
"Don't we need her in Berkeley with us?" James interrupted.
"...yes dear, but not until the equipment is ready and Sareena's
programs are loaded. Be patient my boy. She's got things to pack up first."
She picked up her bag; "Let's get to the hotel; we've important matters to
discuss."
They took a bus that careened through the crowded streets of
Kowloon, safely depositing them at the New World Renaissance, right on
the Promenade. From the hot and humid sub-tropical air they transitioned
into the arctic cold typical of Hong Kong air-conditioning. Jamie had
arranged a nice suite overlooking the busy harbor whose choppy waters
were, as always, filled with liners, ferries, pleasure boats and junks. Across
the harbor the Central District skyline knew no bounds, and several of the
newer buildings challenged the Peak itself in reaching for the clouds. Must
have cost her a bundle, he thought. Wonder what her accountant says.
James and Sareena tried to relax in her sitting room as Jamie
cleaned up from her trip, but were only partially successful. Only a few
short months ago they knew nothing of Mentors, Greater Morlds, or lunar
impactors, and now they were deep into a project that seemed to be
steamrolling to fruition. What "fruition" actually meant they had only one
clue between them; Sareena had some idea of what might be possible if
they could roam free in Mobius Space. To James this was all just a
fascinating research project with interesting people, and a welcome change
from teaching students who complained about any "trick" (read:
thoughtful) question he ever posed. And both were dying to find out what
'important matters' that would bring Jamie here in person. She had merely
announced she would arrive on flight 88, characteristic of her mystery
woman persona.
Mystery Woman emerged from her room clean, re-coiffed and
dressed more appropriately for the Hong Kong air-conditioning in a long
skirt and a sweater. Her clothes said this was going to be a long meeting.
Jamie knew from reports about Sareena's progress, but she wanted to see
her revelation in person.
With little prompting the girl explained her compression
algorithm on a Cross tablet that could be downloaded into Jamie’s PDA.
Not that it really mattered; Jamie was a Physicist, and not up on Exalog
compression techniques. She was so busy that chances were she'd never
examine it closely--she relied on James to do that. But as in any seminar,
you smile politely, try to ask an intelligent question or two, and let the
speaker have her moment in the Sun. Jamie did follow the idea for a while,

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but once the coding began she just listened quietly. The girl had definitely
turned a corner in the past few months, she thought while she listened. Her
natural math abilities had been nurtured by James' tutoring, and the
challenge of the programming, rather than intimidate her, had spurred her
onto greater intricacies in software composition.
Sareena, once started, talked even more than most teenage girls,
only she talked about coding instead of teen-idol “hotties”. She was clearly
comfortable now with her grownup colleagues, and Jamie had to gently
shut her off with some room service. They were munching on Dim Som
when her phone beeped. She opened the case and was surprised to see a
distraught Kathryn on the preview screen, nearly in tears.
"Jamie, the shit's gone down sooner than you expected!"

- 94 -
 Chapter 23
Both James and Sareena could hear the panic in Kathryn's voice;
Jamie unrolled the aux screen so they could all see.
"Good grief dear, what's happened? I thought you were, ah,
practicing with the gear?"
"I was, but I had to jack out about an hour ago. Is that you
James?"
"Yes, hi, Kathryn..."
"Oh, good, I'm so glad you're there…"
Sareena uncharacteristically jumped in "Hi Kathryn!"
Kathryn started. "Oh Sareena dear, you're there too? I didn't
know. I'm sorry about my language..."
Jamie interrupted, "That's alright, she's heard it before. Now
what's happened?"
"Are you all sitting down? This will take a while."
_______________________________________

Money from the government is a wonderful thing, thought Al

Hinterland. Zero accountability; any misuse could be hidden in layers of
paperwork, and any earnest auditor could be bought off with a small
percentage. No need to pay anything back. A free gift if there ever was one.
Money from the government wasn't as forthcoming as it once was
though, for two reasons: after those damn liberty-types got in, taxes
dropped precipitously, leaving little to fight over. And they were tight-
wads to boot. But this whole thing Doltman instigated with his nephew had
loosened up certain funds his party were sequestering in off-shore banks,
and a little cash in the right place could get any operation going.
From Dallas and Memphis to Watergate and Nicaragua to Waco
and North Hollywood, black operations from both factions of the
Republicratic Party were financed by untraceable funds. Eliminate a
threat? Pay off the hitman. Break in? Hire a burglar. Traffic in drugs?
Squash a rival? Demonize guns? Buy a TV network exec? All you need is
cash. Yes, it'd become more difficult when so many such operations were
revealed to the public eye by those damned libertarians, but Jane and John
Q. Public have a very short attention span. There was always some hidden
cash for whatever needed to be done, and Al needed some important things
done to get back into power.
Hinterland's campaign to make Enemies of the Common Man out
of the intelligencia was to start with those women in Burbank. He knew
through his sources that these scientists had purchased a lot of expensive
technical equipment, yet were not producing anything; they hadn't started a
company, weren't working for the state, and certainly weren't affiliated

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with any charity. They were doing something for themselves, obviously
subversive, selfish elitists that they were. Or so he could portray them to
his growing constituency of the ambition-challenged.
For this portrayal Al needed evidence; he'd build his re-election
issue around them and their crimes against the working class. The fact that
the women had done nothing illegal wasn't a problem; he and his
colleagues had copious experience concocting wrongs against society,
wrongs against "the state", even wrongs against nature when no such
wrong ever existed. He and his party had a history of provoking outrage in
the general popular over the most trivial of issues, building enough
emotional capital to win elections against any merely rational opponent.
True, the personal-freedom individualists had won the day in 2016;
however, people were still people, still easily fooled, still essentially
sheeple. All Al and the Republicrats had lacked in recent years was a
sufficiently incendiary public debate, and Doltman had started that ball
rolling.
To further the public distrust of educated types and intellectuals,
soon-to-be elected Hinterland needed to break into this so-called laboratory
of theirs. Search and seizure writs were hard to come by these days, but
with a little money in the right judicial hands something could be scared
up. Al found that, while the old Anti-Methamphedamine Bill from the last
century had failed in Washington, some California State senators had
snuck it through up in Sacramento (with seed money from the Party, of
course). The bill allowed access to personal computer storage without a
search warrant, ostensibly to "protect" citizens from the evil of drug labs.
However, it had proven useful to any public employee who required
unauthorized entry somewhere (you had to get to the computer first,
right?). And what you examined along the way, well, that could provide a
basis for an official search warrant later, maybe even an arrest. Maybe, if
you play the game right, a false indictment.
Hinterland had found his entry key. He paid for a judge to support
him in this, gathered some muscle from the Burbank PD, and prepared his
assault on the laboratory. With any luck they'd "stumble across" enough
damning evidence to incite public outrage. And though asset forfeiture had
been widely eradicated, Al could appropriate, evaluate, and liquidate their
valuable equipment, cut the judge and attorneys in on the action, and add
the remainder to his war chest.
So when his surveillance team traced Jamie to the airport and onto
a flight to Hong Kong, and when their heat sensors saw no trace of the
other woman for several hours (Kathryn's equipment masked her IR
signature), Hinterland and his squad broke into the studio. First they
unplugged the phone in case it had been set to monitor the scene remotely.
Then they proceeded to scan every storage disk and card, and started to

- 96 -
dismantle the Thumb V1.0 gear that was stashed in an outer room. Jees, he
thought, look at all this shit! Must be some statute somewhere to let me
impound it. Oh, this was going to be good!
All the while Kathryn was in another room and simultaneously
standing in front of James, her palms growing sweaty, her heart racing.
________________________________________

Jamie had decided to go to Hong Kong only a couple of days ago.

The fact that she could get a seat on the hypersonic so close to departure
impressed the hell out of Kathryn, even on top of all the stroke her friend
already demonstrated. She easily convinced Jamie to let her hitch along;
only rarely these days did Jamie take a trip without Kathryn clandestinely
going along for the ride (she did need some privacy). And the two women
would often really travel together, no hitching involved, but this time they
decided to make Hong Kong a distance trial. (There had not been a
perceptible time-lag or data-loss from Jamie to Kathryn during the
Breakfast Pizza Colloquium; Kowloon was over twice as far though.)
Unbeknownst to Jamie, however, Kathryn really wanted to see
James, but was still quite shy about her growing feelings toward him.
Suppose he wasn't interested in her? She would be just too embarrassed if
she gushed all over him but he backed away. He certainly seemed
interested when they talked over the phone, but those calls were mostly
business. So hitching was the best solution for now. Maybe Jamie would
get some clues out of him about how he felt, if he was at all interested in
her. She had to get him away from that little girl though. I can't ask Jamie
to investigate either, she thought. Just have to hope for the best.
All during the flight Kathryn found it difficult to hitch. Usually
her own personality was subverted by the input from Jamie; this time her
preoccupation with seeing James again interfered with the data stream.
And when she vicariously met him (and that girl!) at the Kowloon station,
Kathryn could barely contain herself. When she hugged him (via Jamie)
she found all her muscles tightening, trying to hold him closer and closer
so she could feel...
Suddenly the link was broken and she found herself in the studio,
staring up at a pudgy, slick looking man and two big heavily armed
security thugs in police uniforms.

- 97 -
 Chapter 24
Billy knew something was up 500ms after Hinterland and his SS
troops had invaded the studio. He and Jamie had set up a full-time link
between Burbank and the new place in Berkeley, tied into the Thumb
system and the phone line, should something go wrong (which never
happened). They never expected foul play; even now the thought hadn't
entered his mind. The com system was configured to find alternate routing
should local access to the backbone go down; this would take all of 0.5
seconds, which is why Billy knew something had gone down when the
"no-signal" tone played on his console.
Normally he'd have ignored the warning and finished what he was
doing, attending to the problem later. But he knew that the women were
using the Thumb on this Hong Kong junket, testing for range, and perhaps
they had found the limit. The place where he was in adapting the Berkeley
ZPPG to his prototype MIVI (now Mobius Intraspace Virtual Interface)
wasn't a point that he could just leave. These were delicate and
complicated connections, and Billy wired and configured in the manner he
played music: long, intricate, melodic, uninterruptible lines. For a moment
he considered: there was no danger to Jamie and Kathryn in a
malfunctioning link he decided. I’ll recheck the monitor in an hour or so.
Dr. Vong turned out to be wonderfully cooperative in this venture
Jamie had orchestrated. Despite her duties as chair of Advanced Quantum
Studies, and her involvement with CalTech's ZPEXRL project, she always
seemed to have time for him and his engineering. A good deal of mutual
respect grew between them, and Billy learned a lot about Zero Point
Potentials in a short time. He kept having to remind himself however that
this was all real, that despite what Jamie said about these technologies and
theories existing because of their authors' (and his) comprehension, he
really had to work to understand the ideas and put it all together. He
couldn't afford to obsess over the fact that it was because of the gestalt he
was building with Dr. Vong, James, and the rest, that this Mobius Space
device would actually function as advertised. Stick with the realities as I
know them, he thought.
Billy knew from some of his upper division Physics courses that
energy from apparently empty space was a fact, stemming from
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The exact energy density of space and
its rate of change could not be known simultaneously, any more than the
position and momentum of a particle could be precisely known. From these
probability states energy could be accessed in huge quantities from tiny
volumes that Dr. Vong called nodes.
Not that energy alone was necessary for MIVI, nor was quantity a
problem, not with the proliferation of fusion plants (and the

- 98 -
matter/antimatter sources that were soon to come online). It was energy
density that was required to fold the fabric of space in Mobius Manifolds.
Energy warps space just as mass does, and higher concentrations of energy
bend space more tightly. With the proper control devices space could be
twisted into any topography desired; or at least Jamie theorized.
Interestingly, heavy industrial-strength conduits for energy weren't
required, since energy transport wasn't the problem: free space was literally
everywhere, so tapping terawatts from the power grid was not a factor. But
ZPPGs were extraordinarily expensive, and could produce a potential
energy node within only about a kilometer from their main transducer.
Right now Dr. Vong was transmitting a low-density node on
Billy's workbench. He wasn't sure how his newly designed multi-channel
analyzer/synthesizer/actuator, which looked like a miniature Tokamak,
would manipulate the warpage formed around this point; that was for
James' math and Sareena's drivers to do. And then they had to mate the
interface to the device's processors. First though, they had to get the node
correctly configured. And with it winking into existence tentatively in front
of him, he couldn't drop everything and fix the Thumb link.
The fledgling node was emitting low temperature blackbody
radiation as a by-product, making it visible as a glowing ruby hovering
about half a meter above Billy's test equipment. It was actually too small to
see, but it was dense enough to curve its immediate volume of space and
focus its rays, falsifying their intensity. Billy sampled its broadband
luminosity and forwarded the data back to Dr. Vong who could calculate
the warpage from the node's EM flux. Less than anticipated, she
concluded. She had never projected the node so far from the transducer;
that might account for some loss, but not all. She suggested an alteration to
the receiver apparatus that took Billy about an hour to implement.
On the second try the node's color had shifted a bit and was more
orange than before. Improvement, but still a ways to go; Dr. Vong had
predicted something like banana yellow for a point of this low energy
density. Ultimately their node would emit very little radiation because the
curvature in space it caused would fold light back into itself. There would
be something akin to Hawking Radiation, but the node was not a
singularity. Its warpage would be infinitely curved, its folds infinitely
complex, its manifolds infinitely deformable, and the control of same
infinitely difficult. Billy hoped that James and Sareena had developed
software that could deal with near-infinities.
The ball was temporarily in Dr. Vong's court, so he took a
moment to check the Thumb link monitor. Still down. He tried calling the
studio but got a busy signal, so he tried Jamie's personal phone. Busy also.
They must be talking to each other, he decided. He then called the hotel
where she was staying and left a message to call if anything was wrong.

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He had no idea just how wrong things had gotten.

- 100 -
 Chapter 25
In spite of the fact that these intruders were big and threatening,
Kathryn wasn't scared; she was furious! How dare they break up that hug
she was having with James! And why were they in her studio? Not
burglars, she knew burglars didn’t wear uniforms. Oh, she was livid! "Who
the hell are you, breaking into my place like this? What the fuck is going
on??"
The fat man, the obvious leader of this pack of dogs, smiled
greasily and asked, "No need to be vulgar, young lady. Do you have a
permit for this equipment, ma'am?" So confident in himself was he that he
didn't even bother to give his name. But it was clear that the gears in his
head were turning rapidly.
"Permit? Permit for what?" she asked, recovering enough to
realize that these men didn't need to know what she and Jamie were doing,
even if they looked official.
"Ms. Merrill," --so they knew her name!-- "We know you were
previously employed at Exxstacy VR up until a few months ago.
Regrettably, we were not able to shut down that filthy enterprise, since no
actual physical contact was ever made between you and your, ah, clients.
Besides, misguided public conciliation has made such establishments
common. But EVR did have to have a permit. You and your colleague
appear to be involved with your own version of that tawdry enterprise, and
you don't have any permit on file. Therefore, I'll have to impound your
equipment until you submit the proper paperwork."
The fact that the premise upon which Hinterland had based his
break-in, and the premise for his confiscation of the equipment had no
relationship, was irrelevant. He was overjoyed with the discovery that he
could now add immorality to the crime of intelligence that he would accuse
the women of.
Kathryn was stunned. She couldn't explain to this man (come to
think of it, he does look familiar) that there was no NetSex going on here,
and she knew nothing about any permit or license requirements; she had
only worked for EVR and had nothing to do with the running of the
company. This man must be some moralistic old-school governmentalist,
with the force of some regulatory bureau on his side. She was helpless!
Without preamble Hinterland unplugged several of the computers
and handed them to his goons, who ferried them outside to a truck. They
proceeded to tear into the Thumb 2.0, ripping wires from their plugs, but
when he approached the 3.0 gear, the interface module to her implants,
Kathryn pushed him aside and disconnected the equipment herself. No
sense letting him destroy it in his clumsiness; maybe Jamie could reclaim it
later.

- 101 -
 Finally they left without another word. Thankfully they didn't try
to arrest me on some piss-ant bogus charge, she thought. Kathryn went
back inside the denuded studio--they had even taken some of the artwork
she and Jamie had bought for the place!--found the phone dead, plugged it
back in and called Jamie in Kowloon...
"And that's what's happened! Gees! What do we do?" she said,
almost in tears.
"I don't know right now. First we have to find out who this guy is.
He didn't even give his name?"
"No, and I didn't ask. I'm sorry, I was so pissed off that I wasn't
thinking clearly. But those guys had Burbank PD uniforms, and the fat man
did look familiar, like someone I've seen on TV or in the papers."
Jamie thought for a second. "The, ah, equipment you were using
has a feedback buffer, which might have captured a few seconds of the last
image you saw after the link was broken, but before the power was cut."
She gave Kathryn some instructions, and indeed there was a stored image
so she put it online. It was only a couple of frames, but it showed a fuzzy
image of a pudgy, smirking, and familiar face
"I'm not sure, but I think that's Albert Hinterland," said Jamie
slowly. "He was notorious on the West Side as a power broker, pretty
much ran things a few years ago. If that really is him. Like I say, I can't be
sure. Word was he got recalled over, ah, "a law too far" as they called it.
What in hell is he doing in our studio with Burbank PD?"
They sat silently for a moment; then Jamie noticed that while
Kathryn had been relaying her disastrous story, the hotel message light had
lit; the display showed that Billy had called. She put Kathryn on hold and
called Berkeley.
"Billy! Gees, things have taken a dive."
Billy immediately looked concerned. "What happened did the
Thumb..."
"No, it's not your equipment. Kathryn is safe, still in Burbank. I
have her on the phone; let me add your call to hers." She touched a few
button and the two callers were now in split screen mode. With everyone
listening Jamie said to Billy, "Have you been following the news?"
"Not much, too busy. James and I talked about the speech that guy
gave in Congress a week ago or thereabouts. Seemed like another rant from
another Nanny."
"Well, I don't know if it's related, but some guy, apparently a
government type, with two cops broke into our studio while Kathryn was
working. They grabbed a lot of your equipment and other things, left no
name or reason, didn't even present a warrant. We think the guy's name is
Albert Hinterland, but have no idea what he was after."

- 102 -
 "How can that happen? You can't just break into someone pad and
steal stuff! Do we have a lawyer?"
Jamie sighed. "No, I never retained one. We don't really want it to
get out, what we're doing. Not that it's illegal, or that it'd hurt someone.
Hell, what we're doing is going to save most of the human race! I wanted
to avoid any interference; it's hard enough getting things done as it is.
Looks like my plan was blown anyway."
James added, "And with cops in attendance, it'd be tough to get a
lawyer to work for us without tipping our hand."
"So we've got to tighten things down," said Jamie to Billy,
moreover to everyone, "You'd better cut the link to Burbank, and send a
worm out to erase any logs. I don't think this guy is smart enough to trace
us to Berkeley, but we can't be too careful. Kathryn, you'd better pack up
whatever they didn't take and move up to Berkeley."
"Damn! I like this place."
"I know hon, but it's not safe there anymore, and you have to
disappear. I don't think they could actually harm you, but you never know.
The old power structure isn't really dead, just dormant, and they've a
history of violence. Ruby Ridge, Franconia Notch, remember? Besides,
this guy knows who you are, and is probably trying to find out about me.
He won't get far, but that'll just make him more persistent." She thought for
a moment. "The equipment he took from our studio was just training gear.
I doubt he will be able to figure out what we are doing from it. Time to go
underground. Billy, can you find places for us pronto? I have things to
attend to here."
"Sure. The Doc is going to be busy with her transmitter for a
while, can't do much until then. Come on up Kathy, I'll get you settled."
Jamie smiled grimly. "Good. Something discreet please. I'll work
something out for everyone when I get there. Let me let you both go, got
things to do."
She hung up and faced a very quiet duo. Sareena spoke first; "I
don't get it. What's going on?"
"Beats me. I didn't foresee any resistance or interference from the
government. Maybe I've grown complacent, maybe this is a vendetta, or a
sign of something in the air, perhaps growing out of that harebrained
scheme to shoot down the asteroid."
James said to Sareena, "You see, there are people in our national
government who used to run things, badly, but they've been beaten in the
last few elections. There are still enough of them to cause trouble, and they
are trying to regain power by scaring everybody with the asteroid we're
going to take care of. Our approach is subtle and it will work, now that I've
seen your abilities."

- 103 -
 Sareena blushed. She would never develop immunity to her
teacher's attentions.
"Their approach," Jamie continued, "is to use all the old nuclear
weapons to shoot it down. A really dumb, dangerous idea, but it'll go over
with most people..."
"Why don't we just tell 'em what we're doing?" the teenager
asked.
"Because they can't understand. Oh, there're a few who trust
scientists enough to go with the X-ray laser they're building up in the
Owens Valley, and there are many who think the lunar impact is some
manifestation of "divine will". There are even some people who denounce
all technology. Used to call them Luddites. EveryMan however, despite the
momentary lapse into reason of the last decade, sees brute force and might
as the only way to solve problems. Hence, the old guard exploits this as a
way back into power."
Sareena almost whispered, "I think I hate politics already, and I'm
not even old enough to vote."
"I grok that." Jamie smiled at the quizzled look on the girl's face.
"But we should wrap up things here. I need to convince your mom that you
need to continue your studies at Berkeley. Not a lie, since you will be at
Berkeley, and you will be learning way more than you'd ever learn here in
school."
"I don't feel bad about fibbing a little to my folks. After all, I'm
helping to save their lives!"
Jamie said solemnly, "Not just theirs: everybody's."

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 Chapter 26
Al Hinterland was ecstatic: he had pulled off a coup against those
women, coming up with fodder for his anti-intellectual campaign with an
immorality bonus. Many people were still Puritanical about sex without
"benefit of marriage", and were particularly squeamish about NetSex. He
could milk that aspect to death: unconventional sex was always a crowd
pleaser.
The equipment he had appropriated from their laboratory was a
total mystery to him. It looked like computer stuff, and that VR rig was
nothing like those he had used (woe to him if his constituents found he
himself had sampled NetSex frequently!). But it looked expensive, and
even at pennies on the dollar it would fetch a good coin. The paintings he
took would make good donations to local schools.
More importantly, he could sow and nurture the seeds of fear.
Despite what it was designed for, this apparatus looked evil, with all its
connections to the human body. Any normal person could see that, and if it
looked evil, it must be evil. An evil invention from mad scientists. A
Frankenstein's monster threatening the citizenry, a horrible perversion, an
obscene mating of woman and machine.
Al had no idea what those scientists did with this gear, but he
knew what he could do with it: frighten the voters into re-electing him. It
was a weapon in his crusade against--what had his nephew called it? A
dragon! He was a knight on a Crusade to slay a dragon. Good thinking kid,
he thought. I must call him.
Ernie was busy leaking misinformation to the press corps when
his uncle called. The reporters in attendance knew full well that these leaks
were far from the truth, such as the intimation that, though the laser being
built by CalTech was tucked away in the Eastern Sierra, it possibly
threatened San Francisco (most people didn't know geography anyway).
Veracity be damned! The fact that such stories were reported on TV gave
any lie credibility. Ernie also encouraged the various talking heads to
agonize over the issue of "collateral emissions", as he had christened it, in
their daily diatribes. The mere syllabic count in "Low Frequency
Electromagnetic Radiation" would strike fear in the hearts of the voters.
Technophobia reigns!
So it wasn't until the next day that he got around to returning Al's
call. Ernie was very interested in the amount of gear his uncle had
confiscated, and he thought that the immorality ploy Hinterland had
concocted was inspirational. His uncle was a genius when it came to this
kind of political manipulation; he could learn a lot from him.
"So Uncle," he asked, "What's your next move?"

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 "Well son, I've got some friends at a local affiliate of Murdock
News, and I'm going to clue them in that an illegal sex club was raided in
Burbank. Time was that we could call it a drug lab, which would get
people's attention, but things are too liberal these days. To be honest, the
sex club thing isn't enough, given the present climate, but this is just a
tease. We let it percolate for a few days, give the other local stations time
to cash in on it, then reveal that is wasn't the club that was illegal, it was
the sex."
"But how can you have illegal sex? Were there children involved?
Anything non-consensual?"
"Ah, that's the secret. This Merrill woman we found there, she
was hooked up to some kind of advanced VR rig. Now, she has a history of
being involved with NetSex. We could go several ways: we could say she
was being forcibly manipulated, though I think she'd protest a bit too
loudly. We could hint that she was performing sex acts on children, or that
they were maintaining a whole stock of Cybersex slaves, something she'd
have a harder time denying."
"Why?"
"There is an air of secrecy around that laboratory. I have no idea
what that stuff actually does, I only know it looks like some fancy VR.
Furthermore, I still can't find anything on her partner, other than a first
name. No driver's license, voting record, address, bank accounts, credit
cards, nothing! And where there's a secret, there's room to embellish,
fabricate, and FUD."
"The famous FUD!"
"Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. We'll give the locals several
conflicting stories, all bad, and let the people wonder which one is the
truth. They'll pick the most damaging, of course, and once we know we'll
run with that."
"I like that Cybersex slave story myself. It ties in with the
"scientists run amuck” theme that Doltman is pushing."
"Yes, I've been watching your work. Very impressive for such a
youngster like yourself. I'm proud--it must be in the genes."
Ernie flashed a self-satisfied smirk. "Thanks! Your tip from that
woman at CalTech helped a lot. Imagine, a laser that you can't see which
runs on energy from nothing. That smells of scam, even if the scientists
can do it. And if I can make it stink then the Congressman's military
solution is a shoe-in. They’re already calling it “Doltman’s Hammer”.
Soon he’ll be "Congressman Doltman, Defender of the Earth"; he can't
loose!"
Al sat for a moment, thinking, then queried, "I wonder if there's
any way to tie these two stories together. What's that gadget called again?"

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 Ernie rustled through some papers, came up empty, then searched
his computer files. "Ah ha! Here it is: a 'Zero Point Energy X-Ray Laser'.
Sounds formidable, like a code for something."
"Yes; more importantly, it sounds dangerous. It gives me
something to go on. Should have pursued it when that Cesar woman first
contacted me. Must be getting old."
"No way Uncle, you're just getting your second wind! Well, I've
got to get back to work. Good talking to you again, and I think we've got a
couple of winners here."
Al waved goodbye to his nephew and signed off. "Hmmm," he
mused to the blank telephone screen. "I've got some work to do myself."
________________________________________

As Hinterland sat plotting, Jamie was high over the Pacific Ocean
with her own thoughts. First class isn't much better than coach for the
huge increase in price, she concluded. I hate public transportation in any
form. A few more centimeters of leg- and hip room, free cocktails (if you
drink), first on/off the plane, and 50 channels of drek on a tiny washed-out
screen with tinny sound. She wished she could just travel in her normal
way. But that normal was only for a woman living in the Greater World,
and with Kathryn hitching she had to be more conventional.
Perhaps what Jamie resented was the fact that the hitching was
over for now, but she was stuck flying back on an airliner; an unclaimed
return trip ticket might raise suspicions. Thank goddess it wasn't the
fourteen-hour flight she'd taken in her previous life. Five hours was about
all she could take of this.
Best not to dwell on it, not with a crisis looming on the horizon.
She had not foreseen these troubles, and that bugged her hugely. So far
events had unfolded as she knew they must; her path on this particular fold
was well mapped, and she was not one to embark on such a venture
without proper research. Yet the studio break-in was a total surprise. What
had changed?
The meeting with Sareena's mom Prarthana went well, went as
expected. Jamie was nothing if not persuasive, and the offer for a free ride
to study at Cal Berkeley under the tutelage of a world-class mathematician
was an easy sell. How this prestigious institution had found her daughter
and tapped her for special consideration, out of all the billions of teenagers
in the world, mystified Prarthana and raised mild reservations. However,
Jamie assured her that the girl's near legendary expertise on the Net was
pegged as the identifier for recruitment into this accelerated educational
program. Sareena's parents gave their blessings to her advanced studies,
providing that she remotely keep up with her mother's software needs.
These needs required very little time these days, so advanced had Sareena's

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coding skills become. She and James would leave for the Bay Area in a
few days.
No problem there, that had gone smoothly. She and James would
be in Berkeley soon, as expected. James, hmmmm; she tried to remember if
she had known of any of his girlfriends--she and he had never been that
close. Kathryn was really falling for him, and Jamie had seen his eyes light
up when she called at the hotel, heard the concern in his voice over
Kathryn's emotional state. This romance she had not foreseen. It was a
small thing (perhaps!), below the radar, a variable in this venture that had
little net effect (perhaps!). Still, she had failed to predict the imminent
affair, and this annoyed her. Something was amiss, and it itched in her
brain, just beyond reach.
Jamie started to drift off to sleep to the roar of the engines, and
her mind starting making random non-linear connections the way active
minds do just before nodding. I really miss Pat, she thought. It's been
almost six months. Maybe if Kathryn and James...
She was jolted awake by a superfluous announcement for
passengers to set their clocks as they had just crossed the International
Date Line. Jamie hated being awakened out of sequence, one of her pet
peeves. She had never used an alarm clock, not even when, as a kid, she
had been an early-morning paperboy. This intrusion made her more cranky
than she expected, and she couldn't concentrate on scratching that brain
itch. My, I'm getting emotional in my second century. I don't often lose
focus like this.
For that matter, she thought, why was I so flustered at the train
station, meeting James and Sareena? It was almost like I saw them in a
different light. More random connections. Jees, I wanted to kiss him! What
was that all about? Loneliness? Is there some kind of feedback...
Her train of thought was suddenly switched to a siding when the
flight attendant handed her a warm towel. They certainly try to make things
pleasant, but can't you all just leave me alone? After wiping her face Jamie
tried to calm down, tried to track down her previous stream of free-
association. What was that near incestuous, momentary lust toward
James? And why did I pull back from Sareena when she first ran up? Was
Kathryn just hitching then? Did she...
Then it hit her, slapped her rudely across the frontal lobes.
Something totally unprovoked, something out of the bluest blue, an answer
to the why, and to the what had and would keep changing questions, how
things were going wrong. The proverbial forty-two. She strained against
her seatbelt. And oh, the consequences! She was a fool, she was a damn
fool!
What she had struck like a Howitzer shell was that she had failed
to account for the fundamental principle of Modern Physics: any

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experimenter influences her experiment by the mere fact of observing, the
most obvious manifestation of the Greater World! Her presence on this
fold, doing what she knew must be done, had changed the topology of the
space. The cat was both dead and alive. Variations from the expected paths
over history would therefore mount, multiply, cascade, until, until, what?
She had researched so carefully, had planned every detail. Uncertainties
had been calculated, but these present deviations were way outside the
error bars. Shit! This sophomoric oversight of a basic tenant of science
would have real repercussions. The whole project could even fail, snuff out
everything, free-will be damned!
And when it was all over, could she find her way back? Would
the return trip lead her to Patty, or some other manifold completely?
Stupefied, she sadly realized that, unlike the children in Grimm's forest,
she had no bread crumbs on the trail to help her find her way home.

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 Chapter 27
Spring in Berkeley is always beautiful. The winter storms that
bring so much rain and fog had shifted north to wet Portland, Seattle, and
Vancouver. East Bay had captured enough moisture to cause the hillsides
to explode with vernal color. Redwood Regional Park was riotously
yellow, pink, violet in a vermilion wash of fresh green. It was through this
reaffirmation of the persistence of flora that James and Kathryn strolled,
hand in hand, in that gait that announced to the world "Caution! Lovers at
Work!" as clearly as any electronic highway sign.
The two had succumbed to the inevitable shortly after their
independent arrivals at Berkeley. Exactly one movie and two Thai dinners
later, the need for four separate living quarters dwindled to three, and
Jamie had a room for Billy, who had been commuting the considerable
distance from Santa Cruz.
For James, things had progressed very quickly. He normally dated
for months before the relationship was consummated; here he was living
with a woman after their third liaison. This made him wary, for in his albeit
limited experience with women he found that the more quickly things
became physical the sooner the affair evaporated. That Kathryn was a good
decade his junior, and that she had dragged him into bed, gave James even
more pause. But he had always been a cynical optimist, a mixture of hope
and self-preservation. Maybe this time it will work, he told himself.
Kathryn was more comfortable with the situation. The
confiscation by Hinterland and his SS of the Thumb technology had
robbed her of an intimacy she had grown accustomed to, leaving an
emotional vacuum. Her new roommate filled that void, and more. Strange
how years of a near-platonic relationship with Leon, then a short career as
an erotic puppeteer had left me ambivalent towards sex she thought. Now
these suppressed feelings surfaced with a vengeance, and she could tell she
shocked her mathematician with her enthusiasm. However, he was up to
the task, she noted.
The new facility Billy and Jamie had set up was about a kilometer
from the LBL, not far from where Ashby Ave. turns into Tunnel Rd., a
short walk from the couple’s apartment. Kathryn's part in the project was
still some weeks away, though she had a daily meeting with the engineer,
and James' contributions were currently limited to additional tutoring for
Sareena, so they had plenty of time for walks in Redwood Park, Thai
dinners, among other things.
The four recruits were finally together here, and even though they
had yet to ramp up the revolutionary MIVI device, there was a synergy
among them. Billy was a whirlwind of engineering, working 12-16 hour
days on power couplings, data conduits, and Kathryn's interface, a greatly

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enhanced version of the Virtual Thumb. Sareena's second generation
drivers were close enough to completion that he could test individual
modules, which in turn required tweaking of the firmware. James and
Kathryn would frequently stop by the lab to watch the work before straying
off for afternoon.
Sareena now had three teachers for the price of one: Billy and Dr.
Vong were never too busy to explain the engineering and physics of their
work to her, and the girl had remarkable recall of all her newfound
knowledge. Of course, she hoarded her time with James, always managing
to turn an hour lesson into two, a two-hour class into three. This
occasionally raised Kathryn's ire, not so much out of jealousy as out of
missed time she could have spent with her mathematician. She understood
that his student had a giant crush on him--it was so obvious--but Kathryn
had only known betrayal second-hand, through the characters she had
played on the stage, never in her personal relationships. Besides, James
was plainly honest, and Sareena was now only fourteen, barely more than a
child, despite her keen intellect. Kathryn merely coveted the time James
spent teaching; insecurities had not surfaced, yet.
The four quickly grew comfortable in their working and personal
relationship, a synergy that would only intensify as the project progressed.
Also among them, however, was the unspoken assertion that Jamie had
changed. The pillar of strength and confidence they had known was riddled
with cracks. Oh, nothing you could really put a finger on, but her stance,
the subdued tone of her voice, the cast of her eyes, all indicated that Jamie
was somehow different: less confident, reticent, cautious in her command
of the project. And none of them could put words to their feelings.

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 Chapter 28
Like a surfer seeing the seaward wave growing, cresting,
promising a major ride, Al Hinterland felt the groundswell of support
beginning to build for his return to politics. How easily the masses were
swayed, he thought. People these days react 99% emotionally, 1%
rationally, thanks to decades of government-run schools. Stress how to feel
about something, not how to think critically; that was the message so
effectively taught until recently, when the damned Liberty partisans return
control of the schools to parents. But the work was done: the voters had all
received public "education", and their children's schools were still bastions
of self-esteem bestowed, not earned; form over substance, over content. A
poorly educated populace was easier to control. All the gains by the
opposition could be won back by appealing to the 99% reaction.
Therefore, Al and his party merely needed to start the FUDball rolling; it
would grow by accretion.
And grow it did. Al was receiving letters, first by the tens, then by
the hundreds, filled with distrust for "those elitist scientists" and moral
indignation over the "perversions" they allegedly committed. Significantly,
one out of every three letters included campaign contributions--Hinterland
was elated! He had disposed of the confiscated equipment at a handsome
profit, and now his war chest was brimming with donations: plenty of cash
for bribes, surreptitious investigations, and further "evidence". Things
would be different this November.
Al had also kept in touch with his nephew; he learned that
Doltman's campaign to supercede that ZPEXRL scam with a good old
military solution had been passed in Congress, despite having a minority
membership. The FUD tactics Al employed worked equally well over
entire districts and states, and there was enough pressure from the
constituents of enough Liberty Party members to force them to support
Doltman's bill, much to their chagrin. Ah, victory is sweet, and spoke of
things to come. The military brass was entirely behind the project; since
they had been removed from their duty as world police force they had few
opportunities to strut their stuff. A chance to show off and fire their big
guns (and to get a huge increase in funding) was irresistible.
Global warming was obsolete, as far as a political lever was
concerned. Bring on the asteroid!
__________________________________________

Work had already started on Doltman's Hammer, an array of a

thousand fusion-warhead super missiles. Each missile was actually a trio of
ICBMs lashed together: two would boost the third into orbit, and the third
would carry the 2-megaton weapon to JMS2032. Government-owned

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engineers calculated that this would be enough to vaporize the asteroid,
assuming a 5% dud rate, with a one in two-hundred chance of booster
failure, meaning failure to achieve orbit. Of course, this possibility was not
made public.
But Jamie knew; it wasn't hard to figure out. One in two hundred,
five out of a thousand falling back to Earth, potentially ten-megatons of
explosives landing on Dundee, Scotland, Bendigo, Australia, Laurant,
France, or Two Egg, Florida. Not to mention the fact that even if all of the
weapons impacted the asteroid, the energy would be insufficient to alter its
course much. However, the possibility of blast debris falling into the larger
gravity well of the Earth was uncomfortably far from remote.
Consequently, the five had a meeting at which Jamie tried to
convey the new urgency to finish the project. The Hammer would go up--
and perhaps come down--in late August, so they a little more than three
months for completion, not the six they had planned. Her words were
sufficient to alarm and motivate them, but her tone was not reassuring.
Even at that first meeting, when she had solemnly laid out the problem,
Jamie had seemed in control. Now, although her role was only to let the
team do its work, she was too often absent, offered little advice or
encouragement, to make them feel confident.
But they knew they had critical roles to play, whether this whole
evolutionary leap into a Greater World idea was true or not. So, after Jamie
quietly left them after the meeting, they resolved to speed things up, take
greater risks, and meet this new deadline. Billy immediately had an idea on
how to cut some corners by throwing an element of caution to the late
April breezes. He grabbed Kathryn and quickly dragged her off to the
interface, leaving her only time for a fly-by kiss for James. This left tutor
and student alone.
"Gee," said Sareena after a beat, "somehow it all seems more
dangerous now. Would your country really do that? Launch all those
bombs?"
"I'm afraid so. Do you know that at one time there were 50,000
such bombs in the world, all pointed at everybody? Insane, that's what it
was, insane. But people kinda came to their senses and tore down most of
the weapons. And even though my country has been pretty sane for the
past sixteen years, there are still a lot of soldiers who want an excuse, any
excuse, to use the remaining bombs. Nobody else has as many bombs as
we do, and people are scared, so, just as it used to happen when I was your
age, the US plays policeman."
She sat quietly, staring at James, trying to see him as a teenager.
"What were you like as a kid?"
He chuckled at her quick change of subject. "Geeky. I was into
music and math equally. Had the music been mainstream stuff I might

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have been more popular, but I went for the weird. I wasn't very social,
pretty much an outsider."
"Did you have many girlfriends?"
"No. A couple, but I didn't know what to do with them, and they
didn't know what to make of me."
"Were any like me?" she said, eyes narrowing.
"Nope. None at all. My math interests pretty much turned
everybody off."
Two beats this time, and deep breath, then, "If you hadn't met
Kathryn, do you think you'd like me more," said Sareena.
"Ha! Sneaky girl!"
Sareena blushed as much as her dark complexion allowed. "Well,
I'm kinda scared, and I want to know."
James put her hand into his. He hadn't wanted to try to explain
things he barely understood to a teenager, but he really couldn't dodge the
issue any longer. "Sareena, I do like you a lot, but you've got to understand
that I'm many years older than you."
"I know that!"
"Yes, intellectually you do, but not from experience. When there
are many years separating two people, communication is hard. It'd be like
in the old SETI scenario, if we had found an immensely older civilization.
Words and symbols might be received, but who knows what they would
mean? Besides, what would there be to say? The things people do, what
they think about, their feelings, are shaped by what has influenced them.
An older civilization might have nothing in common with us, no point of
contact. Likewise, the longer someone lives, the more influences there are
to shape him. You must know that I like and respect you, am happy to be
with you, and am often proud of you. But even if this whole SETI thing
was a problem we could overcome, you're a minor and I'm a major. It's just
not right to be anything other than friends. Do you understand?"
Sareena had predicted that he would say the last thing, but had not
expected the first. It made his words seem less like a rejection to her, but
she had a hard time hiding her disappointment.
"Aw, Sareena," he whispered, "don't rush growing up. Enjoy your
adolescence."
"Does that mean we're gonna fail, and these bombs will kill
everything?"
"Naw, we'll be fine. You'll be fine, and have plenty of time to
meet nice boys. Besides, you know, I love Kathryn. Don't know how that
happened, but it did and I'm happy about it. It doesn't mean we can't be
friends, does it?"
Sareena sniffed, "No."

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 "Good." James squeezed her hand and placed it back in her lap.
"Now I have to get home. Will you be alright? I'd guess Billy will need a
little coding shortly. He always seems to when he gets these brainstorms."
Sareena nodded and smiled at her teacher as he waved goodbye.
For some time she stood in front of the meeting-room mirror, looking,
trying to remember all of the things Jamie had told her that day outside her
school.

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 Chapter 29
Ernie sat in his new corner office in the Watergate Building,
admiring the view and himself. No junior staffer had ever risen so quickly
in the Doltman hierarchy, nor in any congressional outfit in recent
memory. The astronomical cash-flow this nuclear missile defense program
had initiated was filling his boss's coffers with bribes and kickbacks. Not
that he could even hint at such a thing, and any sudden show of wealth
would set off alarms, even among the friendly media. But profit could be
hidden with creative accounting, with enough skimmed off to rent Ernie
this ostentatious office as a reward for his "creativity". Ah, the wages of
sin, he thought. But it's not sin! We are doing good work here, and
bringing the population back around to the proper order of things.
The last speech the Congressman had delivered, written by Ernie
himself, was to a group of labor leaders, the last of a dying breed of neo-
proletariat organizers who had been eeking out a living as the working
class divested itself of those archaic conglomerations. Labor leaders had
put aside all minor political differences years ago to present a unified front
for the Republicrats; individual initiative had decimated the ranks of
organized labor. (Organized crime also had suffered when most victimless
crimes--drugs, prostitution, gambling--had been completely legalized.
Crime bosses too were turning to the Republicrats to, of all things,
reinstitute these laws.) Needless to say, it was a friendly audience for
Doltman.
"Friends, I come before you today to update you on this great,
historic adventure we've undertaken to save our Moon. Never before in the
history of our planet have so many labored so hard on a single peaceful
project so vital to our continued prosperity. Before I give you the details, I
wish to thank you on behalf of the American people, and all the people of
the world, for your vigilance, your dedication, and your industry."
Thunderous applause, not at all self-conscious.
"You, the workers, have managed to resurrect the strategic arms
that have for so long lain fallow. You, the workers, have distributed these
weapons that will shield the Moon from that marauding asteroid to the
many launch sites around the world. And you, the workers, will be there,
fingers on the button, to fire these Avenging Angels of Earth at the
intruder."
Doltman had made a deal with the most generous labor leaders:
they would get to give the command to launch the rockets. It took some
maneuvering with the military commanders, but we are all on the same
team, right?

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 "No scab scientists will be able to do what honest workers can.
No one who gets paid to think can replace a man who sweats for a living.
Brains will never, ever replace brawn."
EveryMan in the audience sprung to his feet in a cheer. No matter
that few workers even perspire in the robot-populated, environmentally-
controlled plants of the 21st Century. No matter. The camaraderie of
unskilled labor ruled the day here.
"As we speak here tonight in solidarity, as we are joining hands to
save the Moon from imminent destruction, scientists--" he sneered the term
"--are working in California on a hare-brained scheme to remove the threat
from space. They plan to use a big flashlight, of all things, to push the
meteor from its path of destruction!"
The floor exploded into laughter, but Doltman held up his hands
for silence. "Friends, comrades, it would be funny except for two facts.
One, it can't possibly work, but it calls our practical solution into question,
and two, much more importantly, it requires very few workers. There's
very little real labor involved, only some technicians. Those effete snobs
are putting you out of work!"
Boos, hisses, and general displeasure rose from the collective.
"Not to fear, friends, not to fear. I'm one of you, I'm on your side,
and it is I who looks out for you welfare. My people are closing in on those
scam artists in California--at CalTech and Berkeley--to shut down their
bogus, dangerous, and anti-worker project. Legal proceedings have already
begun. In fact, one of our local representatives has already shut down a
technical house of prostitution in Burbank, closely associated with these
scientists, no doubt the source of their funds. And he is closing in on the
secretive perpetrator of that immoral virtual sex shop."

Paradox is a subtle concept:

A. Most forms of adult entertainment, including certainly
the virtual kind where no actual physical contact occurs, had been
legal for almost two decades. Only child-involved and violence-
oriented behaviors were still outlawed.
B. Virtually all of the attendees had partaken of sex-for-
hire at some point in their lives, and the majority was regular
consumers.

Despite A. and B., the congregation shouted in righteous indignation "the

perverts!", "sinners!", "whore mongers!" At that moment Doltman could
sell anything to them.
"Fellow Americans, I need your help in this. I need you to muster
the troops. I need you to assemble the ranks. Get them organized, have
them recruit friends and family, and when we're ready to close down those

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pointy-headed traitors, have them call the local authorities, have them
demonstrate, have them petition, have them recall, Have them vote the
party line. Above all, have them vote Republicrat in November. Throw the
intellectuals out, for your sake, for your children sake, and for America's
future!"
Ernie especially liked that last line he wrote for his boss. Like in
country music, where a song about trucks, rain, cheatin', and Momma
couldn’t possibly fail, misplaced moralizing and the insertion of patriotism
and parental obligation randomly into a speech insures success.
In addition to being the oratory advisor and editor, it was also the
chief staffer's job to review the reports from "grassroots" organizations,
really local party cells, analyze the information and give Doltman the
Readers Digest Condensed version. Ernie read with interest, and some
familial pride, that his Uncle Al was polling well, and had assembled
considerable funds for his campaign. Money would soon be the lubricant it
once was in the electoral process. The short interlude of rationality since
2016 would be over, and politics would return to doctrine. Madison
Avenue would once again focus the debate, not the Cato Institute. An
emotional appeal trumps a logical argument every time, and the
Republicrat sales team had practically closed the deal.
"Doltman's Hammer" would do more than blast that comet or
whatever out of the sky: it would pound the last nail in the coffin of their
opposition.

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 Chapter 30
Kathryn didn't really want the added pressure of an accelerated
timetable, but Billy seemed to relish the idea. He never impressed her as an
impatient fellow; however, like a pit bull he grabbed onto an interesting
idea and gnawed at it furiously until it yielded. The new deadline had
restoked the fires of his engineering.
He had set up his studio laboratory in a medium-sized rented
storefront on Durant Ave. where he had cleared out the old displays and
boarded up the windows. Billy could do all his chip design anywhere, but
he needed space for fabrication, assembly, power control and testing. And,
of course, room for the pilot, Kathryn. Initially his lab was little more than
a workbench upon which stood his prototype ZPP receiver; now it had
grown into a snake's nest of cables, panels, screens, and equipment both
bulky and delicate. Billy occasionally wondered where Jamie got the cash
for all his gear, because whatever he needed he ordered via FAX to a single
number, and it arrived within the hour. This spoke of formidable financing,
but he figured that the mission was important enough for her to pull out all
the stops.
The workspace was "decorated", if that is the word, in High
Rococo, not by choice. The remarkable detail of design and filigree of fine
wiring that caught the eye would do justice to any 18th Century artist.
Workers and visitors alike had to thread carefully through Billy's
labyrinthine laboratory, but he worked best in these conditions.
During the week following the solemn meeting he had his hands
full with the power transfer from Cal's Zero Point Potential generator; he
had never worked at gigawatt levels before. Fortunately the transmission
didn't take place in the standard way. Dr. Vong opened a series of
sequential ZPP nodes from her lab at LBL to Billy's, like an impossibly
fast train of marquee lights. Since each node remained open for only a
picosecond, leakage was minimal so heat dissipation wasn't a problem.
However, Billy had to put that energy to use immediately; his specially
designed capacitor banks charged so quickly that the displacement current
alone produced a horrific magnetic field. The ever- resourceful engineer
didn't waste the field; in one afternoon he built a magnetic circuit to co-
generate power for the lab. Huge electric bills might raise some eyebrows
if they were being watched, and a healthy amount of paranoia had
developed in the team after the Studio break-in.
So right after the meeting Billy decided, rather than redesign the
Thumb 3.0 from the ground up, he would just modify what Kathryn had
been using. She impressed him as an adaptable woman who could probably
handle more problems at the operator level than he first anticipated. He had
intended to make the interface more autonomous, but after reviewing the

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logs of the Jamie/Kathryn hitching sessions he chose to relegate more
control to the pilot in order to concentrate on the power transfer. By the
end of the week he was ready for some tests. Time was of the essence, and
Billy thrived under stress.
But Kathryn didn't need the pressure; she had issues of her own.
Though she and James had been an "item" for only a couple of months, she
had been thinking of him romantically for much longer. He was the first
man she had been attracted to in years, the first one since Leon's death, and
he had been really just a companion, a gentleman friend. Strange as it
seems, she had not been with a man for over a decade, despite her previous
occupation.
She was in a strange emotional space. The long-awaited release of
sexual tension had just about overwhelmed her, and if that was not enough,
the sudden cessation of hitching with Jamie had left a void. Her experience
with the Thumb had engendered a state of physical and emotional
closeness to another person that was nearly the same as the intimacy
between lovers. That intimacy had now been transferred to James.
Kathryn had fallen hard, for James, and felt extremely vulnerable.
She was fast getting to the point where she was secure only when he was
present, and even then she was unsure. James was kind and sweet,
attentive, but not overly expressive or sexually aggressive. She hung on
him, she suffered more at their partings, she almost always had to drag him
into bed. Somehow this made her insecure. Not that he would ever cheat
on her--she had become resigned to Sareena's crush--but shouldn't he be as
addicted to her has she was to him? Isn't that what love was?
She kept telling herself that men are always reticent about
expressing emotion, and that James was a particularly laid back kind of
guy, not given to the wild winds of feelings that most people had. When
she broached the subject, he said he had a great deal of "emotional inertia",
but putting a name on it didn't help much. For mixed in with the sex,
intimacy, joy, and insecurity, maternal instincts had started to surface,
something she had never expected. How does he feel about children, she
thought. How do I feel? How will I handle it?
Consequently, this added urgency of an accelerated timetable only
added to her stress. Her acting skills allowed Kathryn to mask her inner
conflicts, but they wouldn't go away. I can't screw this up. People are
depending on me. She had never been in this position before, where her
actions and abilities mattered beyond a paycheck. And there was no middle
ground; if they succeeded, a new way of life awaited. If they failed,
humanity would go the way of the dinosaurs.
She desperately wished for the sense of closeness she used to
share with Jamie. Without her daily dose of confidence, her instruction and
encouragement, Kathryn would lapse into self-doubt. But the Thumb was

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gone, Jamie was absent most of the time, and she spent her time working
or with James. She could talk with him, but it wasn't the same; her
vulnerability kept certain subjects off the table. However, he did give her
moral support for her piloting part in the project; that was something at
least.
"Here, put this on," said Billy, interrupting her reverie. "It's just a
Thumb interface, but I've reconfigured the end node here for better
throughput. I'm not certain some things will work out, and I want to check,
maybe make some adjustments."
As she donned the interface, Kathryn thought So do I. So do I.

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 Chapter 31
It felt good to be in the saddle again, thought Candidate
Hinterland. His constituents had gone too long without his guidance; how
would they know what to think, how to act? This charade of self-
determination foistered on his people by the Liberty Party had gone on far
too long--they were beginning to realize what that meant: self-
responsibility. They were making their own decisions and living with the
consequences, and this frightened them. People don't want responsibility,
he knew. They want someone to take care of them, to hold their hand, to
pat them on the head and give them support when they behave stupidly.
Who better to hold their hand than Big Brother Republicrat? Who better a
head-patter than he?
Al understood that when he said "We need to [fill in the blank]"
he really meant "I want to [fill in the blank] to get more control, so I'll take
more of your money, skim off some for myself, do what I want with the
rest, and give the appearance of 'doing the people's work'". Everyone will
be happy, no one will be the wiser, 'progress' will take place.
And freedom? Fah! Who needs it? Freedom from choice is what
they really want. The only truly free people are politicians, and everyone
can't be a politician, right? Who would be left to be governed?
Hinterland had been keeping in close contact with his nephew
these last few months. Doltman's plan was proceeding wonderfully; his
numbers grew with every speech lauding the governmental rescue of the
Moon. He had tapped into the great damsel-in-distress that was the
population at large, and nothing gets that damsel hotter than a crisis.
Fifteen years of attempted liberty were evaporating with every promise of
thermonuclear salvation. These national sentiments trickled all the way
down to the local level, and Al was surfing the coattails with all the
expertise he had.
The furor over the virtual sex-slave laboratory had died down; the
local news had progressed onto the next public indignation du jour. The
coup in Burbank had been a roaring success, but he needed to keep in the
public eye all the way to November. So, casting about for another scandal
to milk, he decided that this Jamie person, with no discernable government
file, must be a subversive radical. She hadn't showed up at that lab he had
raided; in fact, the other woman and everything he hadn't confiscated there
had disappeared without a trail to follow.
Most of the stuff he had appropriated there he'd liquidated for
funds, but he still had a transceiver of some kind. Certainly he hadn't a clue
as to its workings, and neither did his civil technicians, so he had to hire
some private brainiacs to 'backward engineer' the gear. After several weeks
they told him that it was some new kind of virtual reality rig (he knew

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that!), and although it was still receiving some kind of signal, they didn't
know what the data stream contained. It wasn't until a biotech colleague of
one of the engineers noticed a sideband harmonic containing EEG signals
that Hinterland's hired guns could decipher the broadcasts. It was almost
like the data collected from a patient in an intensive care unit. From this
they were able to copy the technology so that several receivers could be
duplicated.
Whatever was transmitting the data was doing so on an extremely
high frequency RF band, but like any transmitter it could be located
through triangulation. Hinterland ordered this, thinking that it was a pretty
good lead in finding this miscreant who valued her privacy over the public
good (read: his ambition), and shortly thereafter his engineers tracked the
source of the signals to Berkeley. So, he thought, they are still in
California. Excellent! I can make some pretty big political hay out of this.
Might even get me to Sacramento in a few years.
Al cranked up his contact network in the Bay Area to search for
anything technologically unusual. This was a difficult task, since for many
decades this region, with its elite universities and high-tech companies, had
produced a huge array of technological oddities. Complicating matters was
the fact that the signal moved around, occasionally vanishing altogether,
although usually staying in the East Bay. Its carrier was growing weaker
with time; Al had to move soon. He wasn't sure that the transmission had
anything to do with the elusive woman, but this equipment was a mystery
and so was she: guilt by association, he thought.
He ordered his technical minions to move operations to the Bay
area, the better to localize the diminishing signal. One set up shop in the
Embarcadero, another in Sausalito, the third in Oakland, and they began to
search for some kind of regularity. The signal winked on and off, bouncing
almost randomly for a week or so, before it settled once more in the north
end of the city proper, near Exhibition Park. This was the third time it had
centered there, and it had always been stationary for several hours each
time. The signal had almost disappeared this last time when Hinterland's
technicians reported to him that they had established a pattern.
Elated, he cleared his schedule for the next likely sighting and
took a fast plane to San Francisco. Like a shark sniffing blood, Hinterland,
surrounded by his remora, circled in for the kill.

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 Chapter 32
The way Jamie had been traveling while on this Mobius junction
was unconventional. When Kathryn had been hitching she had used planes,
trains, and automobiles, even a bicycle once, but otherwise she used the
minor loops and bundled toroids that connected various surfaces on this
planet at this time. Thus she could visit James in Virginia, then an instant
later have pizza in Oregon with Billy. Certain constraints committed her to
this junction to see the project through, but Jamie had a few degrees of
freedom above and beyond those of her team, at least until a critical mass
of Mentors had been established.
For traveling around the Bay area however, she used MUNI and
BART, a bit more efficient and cheaper since they had been privatized a
decade ago, and her bike got her around Berkeley. Her car was still stored
in Burbank; a 2009 Mazda RX-10 convertible was a bit conspicuous, and
not as convenient in a city with such tightly packed streets. This day she
was looking in on Billy and Kathryn's work with the MIVI equipment.
Billy was a wonder. When something didn't work just so, as was
frequently the case with new technology developed under the gun, he got a
dazed look on his face for about five minutes, like he had checked out of
reality for a bit, then went straight to the source of the trouble. Then Jamie
remembered than he had had that same look on his face when she, as
Nathan, had first visited him at the Net concert. Billy's genius at winding a
bass line through a piece of music manifested itself as he configured and
reconfigured the MIVI gear.
They had been testing the equipment for almost a week, a week
Jamie was mostly out of town looping through several errands, arranging
surreptitious financing for her team. Power now flowed smoothly from Dr.
Vong's generators, and yesterday Kathryn had managed to recreate herself
as the Asian woman she had been in the virtual Kowloon Park. She was
unable to affect even slightly her immediate environment, not even her
clothes, but just watching the blond woman morph in a flash into an
Oriental lady in the real f'in world totally freaked Billy out. It totally blew
away that virtual diner where they had first met for realism, fine coffee
notwithstanding. He had to touch Kathryn, just to make sure she was really
real. Then he grabbed her and started dancing wildly, almost shaking off
her interface and (now) loose fitting clothes. This shit might actually work,
he thought.
Jamie saw that Billy was still elated from their first success, and
also it had taken Kathryn's mind off other issues. She evidently had never
had to mix business in with a relationship before, and the stress was telling
on her face. There was a special empathy between these women, deeper
than that which normally exists in women friends, and Jamie had the

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impression that her friend had deep feelings of guilt, pushed to the back
now from the rush of success, but there nonetheless. They were preparing
for another test today, and Billy was immersed in honing and tweaking the
MIVI, so Jamie stole Kathryn away for a cup of coffee.
The day was just busting through an early Summer fog, retreating
across the bay to concentrate on keeping the Golden Gate socked in. Their
lab was just close enough to the school to walk to Bohemian Promenade.
Free Speech had long given way to latte bars and tanning salons, but in the
past ten years head shops had made a reappearance. Aromas of coffee and
coconut oil mixed with the nostalgic smell of weed. Well, nostalgic for
Jamie at least: Kathryn had been born long after the Summer of Love.
The relatively early hour, several weeks after Cal's
commencement, made for a moderately calm atmosphere, and the women
drifted from shop to shop, talking about nothing in particular, buying a
knick here and a knack there. Jamie found that she needed the company as
much as her friend. She had been beating on herself since that flight back
from Hong Kong, and this was the first time in many weeks that she could
let her hair down and forget that so much depended on her and her team.
But she didn't forget that Kathryn needed a shoulder, even if she hadn't
asked for one. They stopped into a coffee bar that was in that limbo
between breakfast and lunch, and sat and sipped a bit before Jamie stared
Kathryn down.
"What?" said the actress turned MIVI pilot, returning the stare.
"Just trying to see if everything's alright."
"Does it show?"
"So I'm not hallucinating! Something shows, but I'm not sure
what. You know I don't like to pry..."
"But you will!"
"...Well, only if you want me to. We haven't had a chance to be
girlfriends since before that break-in, and I just thought we could talk."
"You first."
This was not how she had expected the conversation to go. "What,
do you see something now too?"
"Not just me, everybody. You are gone more often now, don't say
much when you're here--not even now--and you seem to have lost your
religion. Is it something we did?"
"Hell no! You guys are working out better than I could have
hoped. And you don't need me around as much, and I have more details
now to attend to, that's why you don't see me. And I never had a religion to
lose."
"You know what I mean, stop ducking. It's me, Kathryn. For a
while we breathed together, danced with the same man together, heck we
even peed together! I know you girl. What's up?"

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 It was at this point that Jamie suddenly realized two things: that
she really needed a shoulder, and that Kathryn providing one was therapy
for both of them.
"Well, it's kinda hard to explain, but I've sort of suffered a severe
blow to my ego."
"Some guy you've been keeping on the side jerked you around?"
Jamie laughed inside, then out. "No, nothing like that. I made a
mistake, a foolish mistake, a sophomoric error. It's deep in the bowels of
Physics, but it may have heavy repercussions for us. It's not about you
guys; like I said, you're better than I had ever expected. It's me. I thought I
had everything researched and planned out, but things have taken many
unexpected turns."
"So you thought you could see the future?"
Jamie turned inward for a moment. If only she knew. "Let's say that my
research could make predictions to a very high degree of accuracy. Very
high! And everything was going according to this plan within very small
error bars until recently. Now, the error I made was not factoring myself
into these predictions." Almost to herself she said, "Of course, then I'd
have to factor my predictions into my predictions, causing infinite
recursions..."
"What?"
Jamie didn't seem to hear, "...So, with infinite recursions, a
butterfly effect would surface." Maybe I never could have had an infallible
prediction, she thought.
"What butterfly? What the hell are you talking about?"
Jamie snapped back to the conversation. "See what I mean? It's
tough to explain the why, but what my error has done is jeopardize, maybe,
our project. I don't know, and that's the shock. I should know, and I don't."
"So you are mad at yourself because you aren't a goddess, other
than in appearance?"
"Thank you..."
"Don't mention it. Girl, we never expected you to be infallible!
We all are amazed at your knowledge, abilities, and strength, but when you
cut your own legs off we get nervous. Don't hide these things from us,
especially me!"
Jamie kicked herself again, not for her Heisenberg mistake. Here
she had made close friends and she failed to notice it.
"OK, mea culpa. I should have seen this..."
"Stop it!"
"Arrghh! I mean I should have known that I had good friends
here, that I could rely on you all beyond just getting the job done. We
should have talked."

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 "Damn right we should have! Billy, Sareena, James and I have all
been worried. A little talk would have fixed things right up."
The way Kathryn said Sareena, almost with an extra e, reminded
her that there was more business to be discussed.
"OK, I've unloaded. Your turn. Come in, open up."
Kathryn stared down into her coffee like she was studying the
Cliff Notes to her recent life. Most people watching her would have merely
seen a stoic, unchanging face, but Jamie knew her too well. She saw a
parade of emotions march across her friend's face in an instant, with no one
to clean up after the horses.
"Jamie, I don't know that I've ever been in love before. Nothing
feels like James. I think of all my boyfriends, guys I thought I loved, and I
realize that I must have been fooling myself."
"Sounds like a good thing."
"Well, yes, but I don't know why I feel for him so, and I sure as
hell don't know what's going on with him."
Jamie's silence said and...
"I mean, he's polite--too damned polite!--but certainly not suave.
He's affectionate, but he never seems to, you know, need it."
"It?"
"You know what I'm talking about. I can't seem to get enough of
him, but he almost never starts things off. Oh, he's cooperative alright.
That's it, cooperative, and reasonably talented. But he never seems to break
a sweat. I'm half out of my mind, and he's just there smiling away. That's
weird, you know? Think of the guys you've been with. They couldn't wait
to bed you, I'll bet, not with a body like yours."
Jamie decided no comment was the appropriate answer.
Fortunately Kathryn was on a roll.
"And then they try to beat you to the finish line. James is so
different."
"Maybe that's what you see in him."
"Maybe, I doubt it. He's so smart, and always in control. Nothing
seems to surprise him, nothing seems to get him mad. Nothing seems to
turn him on either, except this math he's doing. Sometimes I wonder why
he's with me. I know men hide their emotions, but this is ridiculous."
"Well, it's a cliché that men hide their emotions. They might do
that, but take it from me, they don't have as much to hide. Oh, some wear
their hearts on their sleeve, but any guy with something between the ears,
like James, is way beyond that reptilian brain stuff."
"Huh?"
"The reptilian part of the brain is the most primitive part, the most
animal-like. Instinct, fight or flight, spread the genes whatever the cost,
that sort of stuff."

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 "That's another thing. I use birth-control, but so does he. Like he's
so afraid of making a kid. You know, I never thought much about that until
recently, and being with James, well, I'm thinking I'd like to be a mom.
And I don't think he will ever go for it."
"Have you asked him?"
"Haven't needed to. He's expressed an aversion to children many
times. How can he be like that? He's so nice, so supportive, I feel safe with
him. He'd make the perfect father."
"No he wouldn't, not if he has an aversion to children."
"But I could do the parenting."
"Think about what you just said. Would you really want a father
who just consented to make child? Wouldn't it be better to have a man who
likes children?"
Kathryn scowled and her facial parade retraced their steps. "And
that's another thing. He spends a lot of time with that teenager. If she was
older I'd be jealous."
"Hey girlfriend, you're already jealous. I can see those green eyes
a kilometer away."
"No way!"
"Way!"
"But she's only fourteen!"
"And has an enormous crush on him."
"Well, yes, I can see that. James isn't a pervert..."
"He is the most trustworthy man on the planet."
"Sometimes I wish he wasn't; then he'd at least be more normal.
Anyway, I like Sareena, that's the weird thing. In fact, I'd like to have a
daughter just like her. And James likes her, in a good way. That's why I
don't understand why he doesn't want kids."
Jamie could only smile in sympathy. She had known this about
James; maybe she should have headed off this romance before it started.
Adults need to make their own decisions however, and live with the
consequences of their mistakes. How would this factor into the project?
she thought dispassionately. How cold of me! But will they break up too
soon, and wreak the gestalt of the team?
Kathryn went back to her coffee Cliff Notes. After a moment,
"Maybe it's my own fault. You know that success we had yesterday, me
and Billy? I was that Asian woman I'd been when you met me. This time, I
really was her. It was amazing! Nothing like the avatars I used at EVR.
And in the weirdest way I felt that I was cheating on James. Not that I was
sleeping with someone else, just that I was leaving him, leaving all of you,
behind."
"You know that when we succeed, we'll all be able to live in a
greater reality. Someone's got to be the first."

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 "Yeah, but I can't help the way I feel. But it was good to hear you
say when we succeed, not if. Are you back with us for good?" Kathryn
said, clearly anxious to leave the subject.
"Hun, I never left."
They had been at the cafe through several cups, several hours too
long, drowning their fears in java. Both knew Billy was probably pacing,
waiting for Kathryn to return so they could get on with it. He was too
polite to call. The women left the shop and ambled back to the lab, talking
constantly without saying hardly a word. Jamie heard conflict in Kathryn's
silence. How would she resolve her mixed feeling about Sareena? Not a
clue. Could she and James salvage their relationship? Doubtful. Should she
try to prepare him? She remembered an old Kate Bush song: don't get
involved between a man and a woman. Too bad Kate had died a few years
ago. She never moved from The Sensual World to the Greater World.
When they reached the lab, Kathryn going in to experiment, Jamie
off to visit teacher and tutor, each regarded the other. Both saw uncertainty
in her friend's eyes as they parted, similar emotions stemming from
different issues. Still, the ties between the two women tightened in a long
hug, leaving Kathryn with an ominous sense of impending closure and
Jamie with more questions than answers.

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 Chapter 33
Every time Billy tweaked the hardware the drivers needed to be
updated, which kept Sareena, and to some extent James, very busy.
Sometimes the engineer reconfigured the system several times in a day,
and Sareena hadn't finished the first revision before he needed the third.
Rather than becoming frustrated however, the teenager tossed hours of
work aside to start anew. James admired her easy abandonment of hard
labor; in fact, he found more to admire in her everyday.
The SETI talk he had had with her frequently replayed in his
mind. Oh, he never entertained any improper fantasies about the girl, but
he developed a certain wistfulness about her. Where were girls like this
when he was a kid? His early experience with women had shaped his
ambivalence towards dating. The fickleness and lack of personal focus of
the women who would consent to be with him had made him fatalistic
about romance. This hot affair with Kathryn had taken him totally by
surprise, and had banished his cynicism for the nonce, but he had moments
when he wished he were a teenager again, knowing what he knew now. It
was a common wish--"youth is wasted on the young" and so forth-- yet
there it was.
It was during such a lapse into reverie while Sareena was coding
that Jamie popped in (in the conventional sense). James looked on as the
teenager played her computer as Hendrix played guitar; even her
workspace reincarnated Electric Ladyland. While Jamie had leased her
group empty spaces for their work--a storefront for Billy, a bungalow for
Sareena--she left the interior details for her friends, and each had set up
whatever they wanted. The lab Billy had assembled for his hardware
research looked like a lab; Sareena programmed in what looked like a head
shop. The girl had taken a liking to antique "Summer of Love"
psychedelic posters, and the place glowed, bathed in black light, smelling
of incense. Her teacher was perpetually amused by the contrast of hippies
on the wall and high-level code on the screen. Jamie's knock snapped him
out of his daydream (and out of the 60's), and he got up and quietly let her
in.
"Hi Jamie," he said, glad to see her but noticing the complex
expression on her face. "Is everything OK?"
"Sure, my boy, sure," she said unconvincingly. She was a
mishmash of tugs and pulls; the imperative to finish the project fought the
urge to take care of her friend Kathryn. Jamie was feeling
uncharacteristically motherly of late, more so after this morning’s talk, and
she was troubled by the rift she knew would open between Kathryn and
James. They had been a couple for only a few months, but their situations
and experiences had welded them tightly together. Now, a crack in that

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weld would bring that whole structure down on top of them, and their
emotional resilience might not be sufficient to cushion the impact.
Knowing Billy was making progress, seeing Sareena engrossed in
her programming, Jamie gave in to her uncommon nurturing inclinations.
She hooked her arm around the mathematician's elbow and led him into the
tiny back yard. Walking with him like this was an unexpectedly calming
experience, and they sat under a cedar tree on an old bench that probably
had only a few more "sits" before it disintegrated.
"Bored James?"
"Huh? Oh, you mean while Sareena works? Naw, you know me,
always messing with something in my head. I think I can whip up her
algorithms a bit with a few shortcuts from an old Wiles paper I ran across.
It seems that a bi-lateral symmetry function will do the job of a more
complicated manifold when..."
"James! Enough of the math already!" Jamie cried. Whereas she
usually enjoyed these insights into deeper math, today, now, she just
wanted him to express some, any, emotion. "Doesn't anything concern you
other than postulates and algorithms?"
He sat in stunned silence, as much as from the outburst as from
trying to pull back from his contemplation. "Well, I don't know. I'll have to
think..."
"Don't think! How do you feel?"
"I feel pretty good, thank you. Our project moves along and is
great fun. Kathryn's a great girl. Life is good."
He hadn't a clue, she thought. "So nothing's bothering you?"
"Well, now that your mention it--" ah HA "-- I am occasionally
disturbed by something. This whole Mentor thing you've talked about,
evolving beyond, living in a Greater World, leaving the others behind. It
seems elitist, even unkind, you know? Now, I'm as frustrated as you by the
demise of the thinking class, but, I mean, it kinda implies that we are
morally superior, or some kind of master race, or something. I'm not
expressing myself clearly, but I'm just not comfortable with this idea."
Geesh! Resigned to another philosophical discussion, she said,
"Dear, not every fish got to walk on land, and evolution is not a ladder we
climb. My own parents were incapable of understanding my two doctoral
dissertations, yet I loved Mom and Dad dearly. People are born with
different gifts, different abilities. Mozart wasn't part of a master race, just
because he could compose at the age of four. Nor were Ives, Oppenheimer,
certainly not Hawking, members of a superior species. Our abilities will set
up apart, but our abilities task with a responsibility. Do you think your
parents felt elitist when they cared for you as a child?"
"No."

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 "And when they became old and needed your help, did you feel
superior to them?"
"Of course not."
"There, you see? We'll be in the same situation. Caring for
someone should not make you feel superior, and it doesn't qualify you as a
Master, only a Mentor. Just because those we leave behind aren't part of an
immediate family doesn't mean that providing for them demeans them."
James stared at the ground on front of them, watching a march of
ants follow a trail of scent only they could detect. Were they superior
because of that ability?
“Doesn’t that mean that we will be controlling the lives of all
those who don’t become Mentors? Won’t we be just as despotic as any
totalitarian? I couldn’t stand for that.”
Jamie stroked his hand. “EveryMan and EveryWoman will still
have all the freedom they want. They can live where they want, marry
whomever they love, work at whatever job that satisfies them, worship
whatever they want, hate who they want, and they can make as many
mistakes as they want, fail and fall flat on their faces. Our job will be, after
we take care of this asteroid, to make sure that there’s always enough food
and energy for everyone. We’ve been doing this for 150 years, but not as
successfully as we’ll be able to after our critical mass is reached. After that,
it’s up to them to live their lives.”
Well, I guess that’s OK, he thought. “Will we also have the job of
making sure they play nice?” he said, not sarcastically but with concern.
“Well, no, not for interpersonal conflicts, or even some
international disputes. But we do have the responsibility to keep really
dangerous weapons out of the hands of megalomaniacs and power-mad
rulers. Since only we can make these weapons, we are accountable.”
Navell suddenly became aware that Jamie had sidled closer on the
bench and placed his hand on her thigh. So incongruous, with all this
philosophical talk. She continued her lecture, but now in a bedroom voice,
wanting to leave this subject but sensitive to his concerns, and where she’d
directed his hand.
"Look. It used to be that the energies EveryMan could wield were
small, on the order of 500 joules. Then some smart folks invented
chemistry, and the damage he could do escalated. Look what EveryMan
did thirty years ago with a few jet-liners."
"EveryMan could not have formulated high energy fuels, nor
could he have designed anything as complicated as an airplane. But with a
knife not much different from the sharpened stone he used tens of
millennia ago he redirected those energies with horrific results."
"Why? you might ask. Because, like that sharpened stone, he's
fundamentally from another era, a time when the reptilian part of the brain

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ruled the proto-human. Instinct over reason, action over contemplation,
immediacy over foresight. Fight or flight, but now the fight is not with
potential food but over territory. Not so much land as power, the control of
his tribe. 'Control freaks', we used to call them, a long time ago."
"Sometimes the reigns--a good choice of words, don’t you think?-
-of power are political, wherein those who want control prey on the fears
of a population and make laws that govern the people, never themselves.
But another popular method over the centuries of dominating large groups
of people is tapping into their fear of death and the unknown in general. So
leader-types invent some deity that they have exclusive access to. Those
without access must bow down to those who do, and surrender their
freedom of action in order to win a reward in the Great Hereafter, a place
they've only been told about but a place they really wish to go to. To which
to go. To." She giggled softly, girlishly.
"The most dangerous form of control comes when these two
methods are combined, when laws are passed imposing a morality based
on some theism. Ironically, EveryMan and EveryWoman enjoy being
governed this way; it gives them a deep sense of security knowing that
their belief system is reinforced by the full power of government. Which is
fine, as long as the leaders are satisfied with one population. But they
never are. 'Power attracts the corruptible' some guy once wrote, and these
powerful, corruptible people always expand evangelically with 'god' on
their side. Like Hinterland, and Doltman. And the energies they now have
at their disposal are frightful."
James slowly reclaimed his hand and concentrated on the column
of ants. She’s right, and I agree, but what’s coming over her? It’s like one
person is talking and another is acting.
"Scientists, artists, philosophers--constructive, thinking people
have long moved beyond the need to direct everyone's lives. Mmm…"
Jamie paused, then continued more quickly.
"So we must divert that asteroid. Even if we could escape before
the Earth's climate became intolerable, it would not be the responsible
thing to do. And knowing all too well what EveryMan can do with the
tools we have provided, it’s incumbent upon us to make sure that our
cousins have good, free lives while keeping dangerous levels of energy out
of the hands of violent people. That we can do, but only… "
Jamie stopped talking for a moment, catching her breath. She was
finding it difficult to concentrate on her topic; something else seemed more
important, and she abandoned this line of discussion.
"Another thing. Just because we will reach that critical mass,
sooner rather than later I hope, doesn't mean we won't be human anymore.
The same instincts and drives will exist in both of us, Mentor and
EveryMan. We'll, ah, just be able, to, ah, understand...". Jamie's voice

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faded as a wave of something overtook her. What, she couldn't explain, but
when she looked up at James he seemed to glow against the backdrop of
the cedar tree's shade. So this is what they mean by seeing someone in a
different light, she mused dreamily. She squeezed closer to James, still
engrossed in amateur entomology. The ancient bench creaked in protest at
the unwelcome shift in weight, which stirred him from his study. That look
in her eyes is very familiar.
"James," she cooed, "isn't there anything else on your mind?"
Squirming back on the bench he said, "Nope, nothing else. You
explained things perfectly," he blurted out.
She tried a different tact. "Remember that night 'Natalie' visited?
We had a nice talk then, about many things. But we never talked about
children, other than the childishness of your students."
"We didn't?"
"No, we didn't." Pause. "And?"
"Well, I also figured that the reason women dropped me after a
short time was that I never had any need for offspring..."
"Offspring?"
"...Progeny, issuance. Offspring. And I always took what some
called excessive steps to avoid any accidents."
Progeny, issuance, offspring. Accidents. His position is certainly
clear enough. "And now?"
"Now?"
Taking his hand to her chest she asked, "Now do you feel any
different, with..."
At that moment Sareena came bounding out the back door straight
at the adults and gave James a kiss on the cheek. "I'm so tired of writing
drivers! Billy's got his code, and I want to play. James..."
Jamie exploded off the bench. "Don't you ever call this man by his
first name again! And stop slobbering on him you tramp! How dare you
assume..."
"Jamie?" Navell said quietly, wide-eyed, astonished.
"...that you are old enough to be that familiar with him!"
Louder. "Jamie??"
"What is it you do with him, anyway? Oh, I know it is all about
mathematics and programming, but what do you really want to do during
those lessons, huh?"
Shouting. "Jamie!!" It was like she didn't hear her name. Sareena
had drawn back about three paces, stunned and afraid by the woman's
tirade.

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 Swinging around to face the mathematician, Jamie pointed
accusingly, "And you! I know men all too well. What things are you
putting in her head? She's only a child you know. I bet you..."
Too much! Grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her
violently James yelled, "What the hell has gotten into you?!"
She froze and stared at James blankly. As rapidly as the different
light had enveloped him earlier it faded, and there he was, wild, frantic
expression his face. A small part of her said finally, some emotion, but that
was quickly subsumed as the bulk of her very being was overcome by
shame.
Jamie broke free and fled out of the bungalow, totally confused,
hugely mad at herself, desperately needing to know what the shit was
going on.

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 Chapter 34
"It's Monday, June 31st. I'm Vapidia Wallace..."
"..and I'm Fred Mamry..."
"...and this is the evening news. Tonight... excuse me, what? Oh.
It's June 30, my mistake. Tonight we start with a report from Washington
on the heroic effort to destroy the comet that's approaching our moon. Our
reporter on the scene is Grace Davis-Wilson. Grace?"
"Thank you Vapidia. Congressman Doltman, the driving force
behind the missile defense of the Moon, has been furiously working for
months, negotiating with governments around the world for assistance in
this historic undertaking. He is out of the country at the moment, but his
newly-appointed senior staffer, Ernest Martirez, is about to give a briefing.
I've been told that it will be a short talk, and not too technical for our
viewers at home. Here he is now."
Ernie, wearing a trim black suit and impeccably coiffed, smiled
for the cameras. "Thank you, thank you for coming. I'd like to bring you
members of the press and the voters up to speed on the program
Congressman Doltman spearheaded through the legislature several months
ago. First, I must congratulate the voters on the support we have received
in this endeavor. There was an attempt to stall the effort by the Majority
opposition, but the urgency of the situation, and the good sense of the
people to let the government take control of the situation."
"In that light, my boss has been tirelessly traveling the globe,
trying to convince our allies that we need the use of their launch
capabilities. China, Russia, India, Europe and other countries have signed
on. As you are well aware, we need to launch at least a thousand missiles
in a very short time, and our facilities, though the best in the world, are
inadequate in number. Therefore we are making this a global effort. We are
supplying the nuclear devices, but the rockets will come from around the
world in a gratifying display of global unification."
"Now, there has been concern, given the failure rate of some of
our allies' launch vehicles, that not enough bombs will make it to the
Asteroid. Rest assured that these rockets have been inspected and certified
by government officials, and that even if some miss their target, we've
recently added a safety factor of about 10% more nuclear devices than
necessary to do the job. I have a minute to answer questions."
From the back: "Mr. Martirez, are you coordinating with those
scientists working in California on some kind of laser defense?"
"No, not at all. I'm no scientist, but I have common sense. No
light beam will be able to do anything to that asteroid. These people are
working outside the province of government, and therefore I don't hold out
much hope for their success." With a confidential narrowing of the eyes he

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added, "The Congressman has other concerns with those scientists that I'm
not at liberty to discuss with you right now. Another question?"
"We've heard that there is an investigation into this group, that
their research somehow threatens the Bay area."
"Congressman Doltman and myself are coordinating with an
esteemed California legislator into that inquiry. More details I'm not
permitted to release, but let me say, we all know the dangers of non-
sanctioned scientific research. We can't let those intellectual types have
free reign to learn whatever they want. Controls, regulations, and laws
must be in place. I frankly don't know what they're doing; it might be a
scam, it might even be immoral, counter to everything decent I, we hold
dear. One more question."
"Sir, you mentioned that your colleagues across the aisle tried to
block this project but, even with a voting majority they were defeated.
How was that? Also, does Congressman Doltman have any plans for
November?"
"In answer to your first question, even Liberty Party senators and
congressmen have to bow to their constituency, and the speech my boss
gave at the beginning of all this convinced people that our party's solution
was the way to go. As for November, Congressman Doltman has been
quietly checking his numbers and treasury. Even at the end of June, it's not
too late to start a run for the White House. And let me say, given the
displeasure people have shown over the Liberty Party's foot-dragging on
this vital, historic mission to save the Moon, I feel that their candidacy this
Fall will be very weak. That's all for now; we'll keep you informed on the
Congressman's progress. Thank you for coming."
The camera panned back to the reporter: "Well, there you have it.
The government seems to have things under control. And we'll have to
watch Congressman Doltman this Fall. If his plan succeeds, that will be the
big story; he just might be unbeatable. Vapidia?"
"Thank you Grace, for that report. One thing: I heard that Mr.
Martirez called the object that will hit the Moon an asteroid. How is that
different from the comet we reported earlier?"
"Vapidia, I'm not sure, but I think they are really about the same
thing. At least they aren't shooting stars. I don't think we could shoot down
a star."
"I guess not Grace. Thanks you for that report. It's good to know
that our officials in Washington have our best interests at heart and are
taking a proactive stand in this matter. In other news, a group of activists in
San Francisco has started a petition demanding free public transportation
as a basic human right..."

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 Chapter 35
Jamie was in a deep funk when she took the afternoon off to visit
the Exploratorium in Exhibition Park, a brief respite she recently regularly
allowed herself. The legacy of Frank Oppenheimer was celebrating its half-
century anniversary when she had last visited, that is, in her previous life,
and even then it was struggling. Every year fewer and fewer felt the need
to explore anything, and Jamie was appalled to see fully one-third of the
floor space had been dedicated to video amusements. These were heavily
patronized, while the scientific exhibits languished, glanced at in dull
befuddlement by lackluster eyes, passing on their way to the food court.
Even the few school groups present didn't seem particularly interested in
any of the exhibits unless it made a lot of noise and required minimal
interaction or understanding. The video arcade held more appeal and it was
much more passive and didn't require the teacher to explain anything.
Sadly, the staff had to encourage these diversions, since volunteers and
donors were growing scarce. Good thing they hadn't relied on "public"
money, since political support for "elitist institutions" like science
museums had dried up shortly after the turn of the century.
It was difficult to do, but after this particular visit, while sitting in
the adjoining park, Jamie transferred a sizable amount of cash into the
Exploratorium's account. It was challenging enough to cover her team's
expenses without tripping any bureaucratic alarms: she certainly didn't
want a repeat of that atrocity in Burbank. The fact was that Jamie had been
electronically skimming the interest off Republicratic slush funds to pay
for the Mobius project. That money had been stolen in the first place; up
until 2016 the (now-defunct) IRS had been used as a hammer on political
enemies, and the proceeds from these vindictive audits somehow never
found their way into the public fund. Doubly galling! She was damned if
old school politicians would get interest on their loot as well, so Jamie
electronically siphoned enough money to get their work done but not
arouse suspicion. The Republicrats had such huge reserves anyway that it
wouldn't be missed unless someone pointed it out to them.
Skimming for her team was one thing, since appropriation was all
that was required. Transferring money from that slush fund to the
Exploratorium was a more dicey problem, since the both parties might find
disparities. The museum staff might discover these funds during their
audits and try to determine the source. Jamie had to be extra clever to hide
this large sum among other credits (the letters of appreciation sent out to
their donors would have slightly incorrect--on the high side--citations of
their supporters' generosity). It took her some time on her Link to arrange
all this, but it was worth the effort. She felt the world owed a debt to the
Oppenheimer name.

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 Even this act of Robin Hoodism did little to assuage her spirits
however; her depression remained. She had been lulled into a sense of
infallibility by the relative ease with which she had negotiated her way
here through Mobius Space, by her ability to engage Billy, Sareena, James,
and Kathryn in the project, by her achievement in orchestrating this ballet
of keen intellects, and by the successful appropriation of the resources for
her group. She had been especially proud of the Studio, but after the break-
in she had felt violated. More than that: it was first crack in her confidence
and the genesis of her despair. After the revelation that her presence was
perturbing her environment to the extent that her predictions and plans
were no longer reliable, Jamie had been weighed down by the stark
realization that living in the Greater World was not synonymous with
infallibility. She knew this intellectually, but it did not soften the blow to
her ego.
And her ego was under siege. It was bad enough that she had
called her own talents and abilities into question; now there was concern
about her sanity. Jamie was, after all, not the Jamie she’d been born as. Her
transition into a larger reality had produced profound changes in her,
changes she was struggling to adapt to, and her ability to reason may also
have been altered.
Why had she blown up at James and Sareena yesterday? All the
girl did was give him a peck on the cheek, perfectly innocent, despite the
fact that she had a heavy crush on her teacher. Jamie knew that, and knew
that the mathematician was a completely honorable man. Indeed, he
blushed over that display of affection. She was casting about for a reason
for her angry reaction when she remembered her encounter with the two of
them at the Kowloon train station, the last time Kathryn was hitching, just
before the break-in.
Jamie instantly had a bad feeling, and she stared at the ground in
front of her. She knew that she wouldn't have been upset with Sareena, but
Kathryn might. Using the Thumb Kathryn had gained the knowledge of
"being" Jamie at a fundamental level, experiencing her senses and even
emotional reactions many times. What Jamie heard, saw, even felt was
transmitted to Kathryn, a level of intimacy that few had ever experienced.
However, it was supposed to be half-duplex, one-way, Jamie to Kathryn.
Could it possibly be that a feedback loop had been set up? That was not
part of the spec, but given the level of ability she had shown in playing
someone else, even being someone else, perhaps Kathryn's own ego and
personality had been projected back along the data stream, much the way
an actress's own persona can shine through the character she plays. I've
become a screen, she thought, I've become a screen that receives her
subconscious insecurities. With a start Jamie realized that they were living
two-as-one, that her implants had not dissolved on schedule. I'll have to fix

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that ASAP. Then, but Kathryn's not using the Thumb anymore, not since it
was stolen. How...
Jamie thought for a moment about what Billy had done about
shortcutting the MIVI process. He said he was using more Thumb
technology than he originally planned. That's it! she understood with some
relief. They were testing the gear yesterday while I was with James and
Sareena. Gees! I'll have to think of a creative apology--don't want
Kathryn's feelings to be hurt if she thinks she's hampered me in any way.
The fact that much of her insecurity stemmed from Kathryn's
feedback bolstered Jamie's own sagging self-esteem somewhat. Not that
she blamed her friend for any of her problems; on the contrary, Jamie was
relieved to learn that, although she had made a fundamental Heisenberg
error, she hadn't lost it completely, could pick up the pieces and make
progress. She knew that her team sensed her loss of control; that would
change for the better.
But if the implants were still active...
As if on a signal, the bench Jamie sat upon fell into shadow. She
looked up to see the silhouette of a rotund man blotting out the sun. In her
peripheral vision she caught husky men in dark glasses standing just
outside of earshot, hands folded, watching. The shadow-caster spoke in a
greasily pleasant voice, a cross between an evangelist and Torquemada:
"Good morning, ah, Jamie, isn't it? Sorry to be so familiar, but we
don't know your surname."
She instantly recognized the sleazy elocution: Albert Hinterland,
the slime who had broken into the studio and stolen her property under the
pretense of "law". Jamie finished connecting her dots. Active implants,
stolen receiver, ergo, she had been located. All she wondered now was why
it had taken them so long to find her.
"Mind if I sit down?" His rear was already in motion as he asked
that, and the bench groaned under his weight. "Had a dickens of a time
finding you. You're pretty good at hiding, my dear..."
"I'm not your dear!"
"Pretty good, but not perfect. I don't know what you're carrying
that puts out a signal that we can track. Maybe I'll ask my associates to
search you for it--I'm sure it's illegal. Or will be. But I hope we can come
to an agreement making that search unnecessary."
Jamie peered into those beady eyes buried in puffy cheeks and
sagging jowls. He certainly looked better on camera; in person Hinterland
was evidence that living turds walk the Earth. "What kind of agreement?"
she asked, eyes narrowed to thin slits.
He leaned back on the bench, causing further mechanical stress
for it. In a manner reminiscent of a certain pompous professor she had had
back at University, Hinterland drawled, "Everything is negotiation, Miss.

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Everything. You buy a car or a house, you dicker over the price, haggle
over the terms, debate the rates. When you're married you and your spouse
argue over the budget, nights out apart, vacation plans, where to live, even
the color of the living room, or if the peanut butter is plain or crunchy. The
husband wants this in bed, the wife that." Like any woman would have this
grotesque lump, she thought. "When I run for office I give this
constituency this promise, and a different constituency a different, perhaps
even contradictory promise. You're a bright girl, you must have guessed
this."
Jamie answered with one word from her past: "duh."
"Hell, when a man buys a whore, he has to negotiate the price.
Twenty dollars for a hand job, fifty for a blow..."
"You certainly go for cheap whores!"
Hinterland chuckled. "Maybe. Maybe I can just hustle a hundred-
dollar whore down. Now take me; I'm a thousand-dollar whore, maybe a
ten-thousand-dollar one, sometimes a million dollar hooker. And
sometimes the currency isn't cash, it's a word in the right ear, a law written
or ignored. Take that little investigation we did down in Burbank."
Jamie scowled. "Investigation! Try breaking and entering,
violating the Fourth Amendment!"
Hinterland tutted. "See? Just my point. I negotiated right around
that little obstacle. Oh, those Liberty Party types, whom I'd guess are
friends of yours, would protest, but my people have a 100-year-old deep
network to fall back on. Bill of Rights? Just an illusion, easily dispelled,
should we need something vital. I needed something: public indignation. I
needed an injustice to fight, and you had one."
"What!? We weren't doing anything illegal, immoral, or
otherwise..."
The politician interrupted. "Sure you were! Not that I really knew
what it was when I started, but I negotiated with the media and the public,
and they found that injustice. You and your mind-controlled juvenile sex
slaves. Surely you heard that on the news?"
"Bullshit!"
"So what if it was? I made a contract with my people: I'll root out
this evil if you'll vote for me. Look at my numbers before and after. I'll
probably slam those Liberty incumbents this November. Yes, my dear..."
"I'm not your 'dear'!"
"Hmmph. Irregardless"--Jamie winced--"you see that I'm right.
Everything is negotiation. Which brings us to you. Like I said, I'll most
likely win this Fall, between my numbers and the coattails of Congressman
Doltman. People are ready for change. They've been on their own long
enough, and they're ready to be cared for again. This whole experiment in
self-reliance is about to fail. But I'd like some insurance, something to

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hurry things along. You've successfully eluded the bureaucracy up until
this moment. I've found you through that transmitter you always carry"--
Jamie cursed silently--"and now I've got you cornered. Negotiations are not
always friendly, Miss--what did you say your last name is?"
"I didn't!"
"And there's the currency of the day. Pay me this bill, let me put
you into the system, and I won't find a law today with which to detain you
and your lovely colleague."
"That's it, my name?"
"Well, yes, and a DNA sample and retinal scan. Perhaps some
biographical and financial data. Ever since your kind did away with Social
Security and its data system, we've had a hard time keeping files on
everybody. Leverage is much more easily obtained when we have a
complete dossier on everyone, some data we can append, spin, or whatever
for, ah, persuasion purposes."
Jamie considered. This slime said "colleague", singular. Did he
know about the other three? Also, he seems to be involved with that
Doltman idiot, who is pestering the ZPEXRL group with whom Dr. Vong
is working. What price privacy? If it was really just her last name, she
could fake that. But DNA and retinal scan too? She had to consider how
that would impact her former self. As a child in the Real World Jamie had
been logged into the bureaucracy as a matter of course, as all children of
the last century had, infringing on their privacy before they were old
enough to know any different. When Jamie was born parents were still
naive enough to think that the governmental involvement in child-rearing
was a good thing. By the time this fallacy was evident it was too late; a
whole generation, hers, was stored in the Republicratic database. That
meant that Hinterland would find two apparently people with identical
DNA and retinal signatures. What would be the consequences of this?
Traveling back along a Mobius Loop had isolated her from prying
eyes, allowing her to move anonymously, manipulate funds, and generally
exist outside the system. This whole project had to be completed quickly;
because of the Loop's geometry Jamie was constrained to this time frame.
She couldn't have found a junction earlier to give them more time, and she
couldn't pull out now and try again. She was committed.
"Penny for your thoughts, dear."
Jamie steamed, "Cut out that 'dear' shit, and give me a moment to
think."
"A moment more is all you have, dear." The sweating official
motioned to the well-dressed thugs who moved in closer, one opening an
attaché case to reveal ID equipment and a link.
She had to quickly make some guesses. It would take them time to
assimilate this information, time to discover the anomaly, time to act upon

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it. Would her team achieve their goal before these goons shut everything
down, and before their comrades launched their disastrous nuclear folly?
The blow to her confidence that her Heisenberg mistake had dealt still
hindered Jamie's insight and decisiveness. If only...
"Miss..."
"Walters," she lied quickly, "Jamie Elizabeth Walters." Maybe it
would slow them up a bit. She couldn't have these morons stumble on their
Berkeley setup, and she certainly didn't want them to trace the leak in their
slush funds too soon. A competent accountant, armed with enough
personal information about her, might be able to link their finances with
hers.
"See dear? That wasn't so difficult. Of course, we'll have to check
that out, after we get a sample from you." The thug with the ID gear took a
scraping from Jamie's fingernail and a lock of her auburn hair. They made
her stare into the retinal scan device, and took her fingerprint for good
measure. Little was said during the identity rape.
Finally, his earlier feigned civility aside, Hinterland croaked,
"Well that's about it for now. It's getting too hot for me out here anyway.
Thanks for your cooperation, Miss Walters. We'll be in touch, I'm sure."
I'm sure. She hoped that this dull-witted toad would keep to his
word and not try to detain her, or find Kathryn, and ultimately James,
Sareena, and Billy, and arrest them on some fallacious charge. She hoped
all he wanted was to prosecute some loony public vendetta against her
alone. No! What was she thinking? Of course he would go for every
indecent act he could, to further his pitiful candidacy. Now there was even
more pressure on her friends and colleagues. Hinterland would strike,
maybe before JMS 2032, maybe after. It didn't matter: the Devil was
coming with a hand basket and a travel voucher.
It was all a matter of time.

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 Chapter 36
Al Hinterland gloated during the entire flight back to LA, and
during the whole limo ride to his campaign headquarters. He could allow
himself this indulgence because he had just sewn up the election; he could
now milk this manufactured controversy all the way to November.
Normally people wouldn't care what eggheads were doing as long as it
didn't mess up their weekends. Ignorance is bliss, and Al's constituency
was very happy, unless he told them otherwise. Like now. His small cadre
of disenchanted voters had infected the majority through highly visible
demonstrations and his own skillful manipulation of the press. Now public
indignation over the "immorality" of human interface technology had
spread to general distrust of any brainiac who opposes the Doltman effort
to save the Moon, and Hinterland could focus this distrust like a laser beam
onto any intellectual activity. And the Liberty Party was rife with
intellectuals.
Al was sure that Ms. Walters had lied about her name, and the
voice-stress analyzer he had carried hidden in his pocket had confirmed
this. People not trained to fabricate lies could not fool his mechanical
truthsayer, not like I can, he thought. No matter, biometrics would not lie.
Jamie, for she hadn't lied about that name, might be too young for a Social
Security brand, but her DNA might just be on file. Just after the turn of the
century Congress had managed to pass a law requiring doctors to turn over
confidential medical records "in the name of public safety", really to keep
tabs on the citizenry. (Of course, this data was "destroyed" when the law
was declared unconstitutional in 2016. Yeah right!) This woman was a kid
at the time, and had given up her DNA during routine childhood
inoculations, pinning a birth certificate on her, and her real name.
Parents could be located and pressured for "statements", ex-
boyfriends or husbands could be located (or invented) and paid off for
incriminating "evidence". A documented bad reputation, along with
emotional personal attacks from jilted lovers, would bolster the character
assassination he was planning for her.
Ms. "Walters" was also obviously college educated, so once her
real name was established a trace of her finances could be made--no one
had paid cash for college in a hundred years. A money trail could be
established and found to be "illegal". That equipment he liberated in
Burbank spoke of deep pockets; had she financed something new up in San
Francisco? Did she have more than that one sex-surrogate working for her?
Were they involved in some vast conspiracy of virtual-sex slavery? No
telling what perversions those mental types might think up. Oh this is a
fucking gold mine! Al thought, amused by his own pun.

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 All in all, his plan to vilify this woman, her intellectual cronies,
and by inference, the reigning Liberty Party, couldn't fail. Furthermore, this
grass-roots reaction to science and scientists fed the furor his nephew's
congressman had started. He would be sure to point this out to Ernie; no
telling how much gratitude he could wring from Doltman and his party
bosses. His nephew was doing well for himself in DC, and the flow of cash
had started, ear-marked for local "spontaneous activism."
Doltman had requested, through Ernie, that he target the CalTech
people who were working on that silly Zero Point what-the-hell-ever
project they were building. His contact, Ginny Cesar, had been his mole
there, and had pinpointed the location of the project: the newly finished
Thorne building right near Beckman Auditorium. Good! Better than
something up in Bishop. He'd organize a vocal rabble to protest the
"ELF's" and "EMP's" that emanated from the facility. Were there any such
emanations? Who cares! They were bogeymen he could resurrect from the
last century to concern the populace.
Hmmmm, he considered. Is there a way I can tie in this with my
pet demon, Ms. Walters? What could she be doing in the Bay Area? What's
up there? San Francisco State? Cal Berkeley? Maybe, just maybe.
Hinterland called up his research staff and set them to investigate any links
between what CalTech is doing and the goings-on at Berkeley. I've already
done the groundwork on Walters. If I could create a conspiracy. Gees! It
keeps getting better and better. Christmas in July!
Al's mind raced. If Doltman's Hammer works, or as long as it
doesn't fuck up, he'll have presidential credibility. If I give him another
cause, a conspiracy of intellectuals to fight, it'll be a free ride outa this
local shit all the way to DC. Hey! Doltman'll need a running mate. With
Ernie in his ear, and this prize dumped in his lap, I'll be a real contender
in 2036. Together we can bring back order to the chaos of personal
freedom, and our citizens will be all the more content.
Best put on a "screama in Pasadena"!

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 Chapter 37
Kathryn took the next day off. The talk she and Jamie had had
weighed so heavily on her mind that she couldn't concentrate on the task at
hand. In fact, Billy's device registered unexpected results during that test,
so he needed a day to sort things out anyway.
The night before James had told her about the events leading to
the sudden hostility her friend had shown towards him and that girl. He
seemed more surprised than hurt, perhaps because of the brevity of the
outburst, more likely because he was just clueless about women, she
thought. However, knowing that always-cool Jamie had exploded only
added to her own guilt. Had she somehow precipitated this episode? What
had she said to Jamie to release such anger? And why at James and the
girl? It's almost what I would have said, given the situation. Kathryn's
emotional state made for a cold bed that night. Typically, James didn't
seem to notice.
Kathryn feigned sleep when James got up to work on his math,
mumbled a goodbye when he left for the day, got up to check messages,
then hid under the covers until early afternoon. Habit, not ambition,
prompted her out of bed and into the summer day. Her shield against
reality became sloppy make-up, unflattering clothing, and dark sunglasses;
Kathryn wanted no one to look at her. She had no appetite, but needed
some caffeine, so she slunk down to the same coffee bar as the day before.
Maybe she had left some clue to her feelings there.
Damn! she mused. What's gone wrong this time? Is it me? First I
bail on the actress idea, then I slum for a decade with Leon only to become
a virtual sex surrogate. Now I have the chance to do something important,
and I go and fall into a relationship that is going nowhere. And I might
have dragged my one good friend in many years down with me.
Jamie. Who the hell is she anyway? Here I put all sorts of trust in
her, but I really don't know much about her, where she comes from, her
family, where she gets all that money. Does she have a lover she visits
when she vanishes so mysteriously?
She sat drinking coffee and thinking, trying to be invisible to the
other customers who came and went in a steady flow. Kathryn observed
the interaction between them and the staff, the give and take of business
people talking during their break, the personal communication in couples.
She couldn't actually hear what was being said, but it wasn't necessary to
have the details to follow the conversations. Perhaps, she decided,
knowledge of someone is not limited to the particulars of circumstance.
Perhaps it is limited by the particulars of circumstance.
So, regardless of Jamie's background, she trusted her girlfriend,
and felt bad that she had somehow pushed her over some personal limit.

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But I can't be responsible for her anger, any more than she is responsible
for my disillusionment.
Ah HA! That's it: I'm disillusioned with the way things are turning
out! I've been projecting things into this evolutionary step Jamie says we're
about to make. I must have expected some kind of nirvana with this
ascension into her Greater World, and it might still get that way, but
ascension itself is not perfection. For one, it's not insulation against
emotional mistakes. What was I thinking? All the while we've been working
on this project did I think that we would be leaving personal foibles
behind, that we'd somehow become better, not bring along any old
baggage? I guess I did. How wrong I was!
No one in the coffee bar noticed the minor epiphany that engulfed
Kathryn at that moment. Coming to an understanding of her state of mind
eased her feelings of guilt and her disillusionment at unfulfillable
expectations. I guess people will always be people, whether they have
transcended reality or not. Sipping and mulling, mulling and sipping,
Kathryn's face finally relaxed into a sardonic smile, her closest approach to
happiness in many days, an expression unseen by the other patrons in the
bar.
She nursed three coffees and a bagel over three hours. After the
third coffee the waiter ignored her, which suited her just fine; it was the
end of his shift anyway and he left without even a nod of acknowledgment
for the generous tip. No matter. The day had nearly passed into evening
when, as if on cue, Jamie arrived. To Kathryn, her friend seemed worried
but more like the old, familiar Jamie, more in control. You could see it in
her eyes, tell it in her walk as she marched up to Kathryn's table without
even looking around.
"Hey! How did I know you'd be here?"
"You tell me, hon. You always seem to have insider information
on so many things."
Sitting down across from Kathryn Jamie sighed, "Well, I seem to
have lost my touch recently. And because of that, things have heated up
even more."
"Wait, before you tell me more bad news, tell me why you blew
up at Sareena and James yesterday, not that they didn't deserve it."
How telling that statement is, she thought. Jamie wasn't ready to
reveal that the feedback loop with her friend was the cause of that incident.
She'd be reticent to continue the MIVI trials at this critical time. Now,
when Kathryn was for the first time stretching reality without instruments,
though she was unaware of it.
"Oh. Well, I guess I'm a bit too empathetic with my best buddy,"
which brought a smile to the eyes if not the mouth of the MIVI pilot. "I

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owe them a major apology." At this point the night shift waitress came
over, took Jamie's order and scurried off.
"Well, I didn't want anything anyway," huffed Kathryn. "OK, so
what's the bad news?"
"I've just had a very bad talk with a very bad man, one Albert
Hinterland."
"THAT ASSHOLE!?"
Even her outburst didn't attract any attention, Jamie observed.
"Yeah, him, Sphynctorious Maximus. Evidently the Thumb implants were
a little more durable than Billy calculated, and he had his techies trace me
with our stolen equipment. He found me in Exhibition Park. Had me
cornered, with two heavy suits to back him up. I gave him a fake name, but
he took biometrics, so it's only a matter of time before he tracks me, my
finances, and my contacts: us. I’ve learned Doltman's party has already
started organizing protests outside the CalTech ZPEXRL Project. They'll
probably leave the Owens Valley alone since it's too remote for good press
coverage, but I expect the protests to begin here soon after, followed by
trumped-up charges to start bogus investigations. That'll shut us down for
sure."
Kathryn was stunned into silent rage. She had never been a
political animal, but now she saw that, since she was in the line of fire, old-
school politics were about to shoot her down. It wasn't any of their damn
business! Shit!
"How much does he know?"
"Well, he doesn't know about Billy, James, or Sareena, I'm sure.
And his only take on MIVI was the Thumb equipment he stole from us.
But that's more than enough to make trouble."
It was at this point that Kathryn noticed people beginning to stare
at Jamie. Hushed, she bent forward, "Do you see..."
"Yes. We need to leave. Let me finish this..." she downed her
drink "...and go find the others."
Kathryn sighed, mostly to herself, "Dammit! And we are so close!
Everything is falling apart." She looked ready to cry.
"Not everything, dear heart." Only Jamie realized that Kathryn
had reached a milestone that day. No one else could see it, or her.

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 Chapter 38
"No ELFs in our forest!" "Luddites are people too!" "We don't
need no EMPs!" "Ban the Brainiacs!"
The scene outside the Thorne building was loud and raucous,
especially so since the national media was covering the story. Chief of
Staff Martirez had clued in the right people for that. Now, via video feeds
to DC and Burbank, he and his uncle in separate cities surveyed their
handiwork.
"Cute how you got your people to embrace the term 'Luddite'. It's
now a badge of honor to them," Ernie complimented Al. "I doubt that any
of them know the origin of the word. Hell, even I had to look it up, and I've
got a degree in Political Science."
"Well, words are what you make of them. You're too young to
remember, but at one time 'nature', 'green', and 'organic' were big medicine.
Invoke and embrace any of them on an issue and your numbers would soar.
Speaking of numbers, I see that your boss is polling very well. He looks
unstoppable."
"Yes, I think we've started a revolution. And he'll take as many
party members along as possible. Which brings up another subject. I know
we can count on your support--you've already done so much for us as it is--
but it'd be nice to have a long-term plan, to keep us on the same page. You
know, something we can keep in our back pocket. Oh, Doltman's Hammer
will be good for a couple of years, but it's an over-and-done thing. Maybe
you can help. We need something we can ride for decades. You know, like
that War on Drugs last century. They dragged that out for, what, forty
years?"
Hinterland nodded through his phone. "More successful than the
Cold War, because the opposition couldn't capitulate. Rode that issue for
years." Now here Al had to be coy. He had been thinking about creating
just such a long-lived issue to tie him to the national party, but it wouldn't
do to be too up front with his ideas; they might lose their authorship. Ernie
was family, but this was politics. "Good thinking, lad. I like it. Hmmm."
He appeared to lose himself in thought, a well-practiced ploy. "What do
you have in mind?"
"Don't know, don't know." The two sat on opposite sides of the
country, watching the more rowdy members of the crowd urinate on the
landscaping, so confident of the righteousness of their cause. "Maybe some
kind of patriotic campaign."
Al wasn't keen on this. "That worked for a while back in the 50's
with the Red Scare, but it didn't last long, and it backfired bad on
McCarthy. Besides, we have no national enemies anymore. Something like
a moral crusade works better. Yes, a crusade. It's harder to attack, and

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more malleable." He had his whole cyber-sex-slave conspiracy in mind,
but let him fish for it.
"OK, I'll think about it." The crowd had now barricaded the doors
of the Thorne building and were pulling down the temporary WAN
antennae. The camera swung to the campus police who were frantically
trying to dislodge the rabble. Pasadena police were, somehow, not in
attendance. "Any other news?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact. My own private campaign is doing well;
you know I tracked down that woman who owns, excuse me, owned the
laboratory in Burbank?" he smirked.
"Yes, bravo!"
"Thank you. Well, my staff hasn't found much on her yet, only
some contradictory evidence that identifies her as a man born early last
century. Don't know how she did that, but we'll find out who she is shortly.
More interesting is that we found her in San Francisco. My guys have
discovered that Berkeley also has one of these Zero Point thingies, though
I don't think it's a laser. If I can tie her up with this project here in
Pasadena, we can add "sexual perversion cartel" to our crowd's placards."
Ernie brightened. "Now there's an idea! Do you think we could
inject guilt back in the public mind? Nothing stirs up controversy like a
good public guilt-fest. Outrage at their neighbor's actions, actions that they
wish they could do themselves. Good, old-fashioned moral indignation.
And what better to be indignant about than anything other than procreative
sex? I remember seeing early television programs where even married
couples slept in separate beds. If we could get back to the idea that sex for
pleasure was evil, could re-illegalization of intoxicants be far behind?
Perhaps a pan-fundamentalist revival too: most proper religions frown on
sex and drugs anyway. You know people are always happier when
someone else decides what's right and wrong for them. Saves them from all
that tiresome soul-searching. So we could be their "moral compass" for
years to come!"
Al was pleased. His nephew had taken the bait, and since Ernie
thought that it was his own idea, authorship, and the perks that go with it,
was secured. "We can bring back politically correct speech, even correct
thoughts, make people feel guilty about just about anything. Hell, we could
reintroduce censorship, limit the words and ideas that people are allowed to
say in public. They'd love it! Finger-wagging has long been favorite hobby
of the masses." The veteran politician was on a roll, like a gambler winning
big at the tables. "And the opposition will be helpless; they won't be able to
use rationality in such an emotional debate."
Ernie caught the fever. "And, we can make billions from the
underground economy that will spring up to fill the void. No matter what is
said in the open, people will still want contraband, and that reopens the

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door for, let's call them, "entrepreneurs". They will all need insulation,
protection from the Law, you know. Phew!" he gasped, "Outstanding! Yes,
I think we've hit upon a capitol plan, Uncle, a capitol plan." Al was pleased
to hear "we've".
"I've...wait a minute. Let me put you on hold, my boy" One of
Hinterland's techies just handed him a paper. Martirez silently watched the
crowd trample the shrubbery and smear obscenities across doors of the
Thorne building as Al read the message. "Good news! I have a name
attached to that Zero Point gadget in Berkeley: Dr. Hai Vong. The
interesting thing is that a couple of months ago she phoned the very same
lab we raided in Burbank. Strange, that place had no outgoing call records
attached to it at all, even though they were wired. But we knew the number
there, and this Vong person called it. Now, that doesn't mean that my Miss
Walters is involved with that laser scam, but there definitely is a relation
between the two, and that's all I need to get the ball rolling. Guilt by
association, "all scientists are perverts". Time to move: can you give a call
to your people up in the Bay Area? I'll need warm bodies for the coming
protest march."
"Sure, sure, no problem. My folks'll be there.” Hmmph Ernie
thought. “You know, there's always been a big back-to-nature socialist
movement there, even during the last fifteen years, just more
underground." The video screen showed the rabble ripping the plaque of
dedication off the wall. "They've been antithetical to us in the past, but I
think we could turn them to our side for this. Tap into the old No Nukes
remnants. That Zero Point stuff--it's newcular, isn't it?"
"Must be. Even if it isn't, no one will know the difference."
"Yeah, right. Let me poke around a bit. What's your timeline?"
"Soon, probably a week or so."
"Great!" Finally, the local police showed up on the CalTech
campus and dispersed the crowd. Ernie commented, "Couldn't let our
crowd get too out of hand. It would reduce their credibility. Anyway, we'll
talk soon. I have a good feeling about this."
Al Hinterland chuckled inwardly and outwardly about two
different things. "So do I lad, so do I."

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 Chapter 39
Before Jamie gathered the group together to tell them of the latest
bad news-something she dreaded, since she hadn't delivered good news for
quite a while--she needed to have a private talk with James, and Sareena
especially. She didn't want to blame the accidental feedback-loop for her
behavior, and she was beginning to think that she it would be a bad idea to
ever reveal anything about it. James would quickly deduce that Kathryn
had been privy to an unknown number of private conversations; it would
be Kathryn's business whether or not to discuss it with him. And while
Sareena wouldn't be spooked by the idea, she'd never be able to keep the
secret from her tutor/crush.
Therefore Jamie went back to the coding bungalow and
classroom, virtual hat in hand, and, hugging both tightly, apologized
profusely. She explained that growth into Mentor status didn't turn one into
an emotionless thinking machine. The stresses and pressures of life didn't
evaporate; there still would be things beyond your control. Not wanting to
go through her apologia twice, she squeezed them both again and asked
them to wait until they all met the next day at Billy's lab.
So out-of-character had Jamie's recent anger been that teacher and
student provisionally accepted her apology. James, in a typically masculine
manner, intellectually understood that seeing that hitherto hidden side of
his friend should make them closer. Well, it didn't, but neither had it forced
them apart any. He had huge emotional inertia and was neither bonding
tighter with her because of her anger nor smarting from the sting of her
wrath. Other than a mild curiosity about the stimulus for Jamie's unusual
behavior, James had written the incident off as part of her general malaise
of the past month or so. Then again, he had not been the primary target of
the outburst; Sareena had, and she was still quite young, despite her
apparent maturity. It would take time for her hurt to heal. She took a cue
from her teacher and would try to put it behind her.
They convened in the anteroom of Billy's workshop early the next
morning, where the atmosphere was tense, for several reasons. They were
expecting some major announcement from Jamie, hopefully explaining her
behavior. Billy had some issue he needed to discuss; as elated as he was
about their recent successes, he was beginning to fear the repercussion if
they really did achieve what Jamie had describe for them all those months
ago. Furthermore, they had all seen the footage of the mob at CalTech. It
was very unnerving, as rumors of a similar demonstration close to home
were circulating in the alternative newspapers.
Jamie was the last to arrive, and she went around to each and
squeezed their hands. "My friends, I've been acting poorly the last couple
of weeks, months really, at a time when I needed to be especially together

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for you. You've all worked on tirelessly despite me, and I thank you for
that. It's so important, so much more important than even I thought when
we first met last Fall."
"But I've been less than inspiring or helpful recently, and I've got
to say I'm real sorry for that. I've gone through some major changes in the
last year or so, changes I still am getting used to, and it sometimes catches
up with me. Moreover, it's interfered with my concentration, and I've made
a couple of really bad errors in judgment. Primarily, I lost track of the fact
that my presence here alters the reality I had anticipated. Now, I know
you're probably thinking 'duh, of course it does', but the influence is on a
very fundamental level, more than just the obvious interaction between us
as people."
Her friends were quiet as she continued. "This sophomoric
oversight has endangered our project, because it's allowed the man who
raided Kathryn's and my studio in Burbank to trace me here. His name is
Al Hinterland, and he's a candidate for councilman in Burbank looking for
a bogeywoman to scare the voters with: me. Ultimately he'll trace my
accounts, and eventually he'll find all of us. Now, you've done nothing
illegal, but that doesn't matter at all. He's a political animal, and legality is
infinitely malleable to him, and that makes him a menace."
Sareena asked, "How did he find you?"
Kathryn looked up; she had been doggedly holding her man's
hand, making it her center of attention. But she awoke to the question and
answered, "Jamie and I were testing equipment Billy made for Jamie. This
man confiscated it when he broke in, and it led him to her."
Jamie thought, Brilliant! She’s guessed the real reason! But does
she suspect a feedback loop too?
James spoke up. "Wait a minute. You're saying that some
politician is trying to turn you into a criminal?"
"Yeah."
"But you haven't done anything unlawful?"
"Nope." Well, Jamie had been stealing from thieves; was that
illegal? Regardless, it wasn't what Hinterland was going on about. "He
managed to get some judge down there to invoke an old law that allowed
him to break in the Studio, but there was nothing there he could arrest us
on."
Billy snorted, "So what can he do?"
"He's trying to invent a crime, make something up that he can nail
me on. Failing that, along with Congressman Doltman and company, he's
whipping up the population, turning them into a mob against scientists,
philosophers, anyone who's highly educated. Those that we know are
future Mentors. These people don't think rationally, they just react to what
Doltman and others tell them. Truth be told, fifteen years ago, when the

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Liberty Party won the presidency, these same mobs were just reacting to
the rationalists, doing what they were told back then. The number of proto-
Mentors had risen to the point where we could influence enough people to
win electoral majority, just barely,” she said, then almost to herself, “and I
feel that our brief experiment in personal liberty is just about over."
Jamie went on, "Logic, cause and effect--those are elusive and
ephemeral concepts to EveryMan, and forcing them into that mode created
a state of unstable equilibrium. This brief interlude of sanity is coming to a
close. In a way it's a new racism, a pogrom, but they don't understand that
it is. They can't. They haven't a clue that a small branch, a twig of the
family tree, is growing in a different direction. It may eventually fall off
and grow independently; who knows? The fact is that, though we still look
like them, we are different."
This jarred Billy, and brought to mind the issue he had been
brooding over since last winter. "Jamie, all this talk about evolution. I
mean, I don't know. You know, I'm kinda of an independent guy. Oh, I like
working with you guys, don't get me wrong, but I'm really doing my thing
here. I'm kinda worried about this gestalt stuff you've talked about. It has
some weird kind of communal sound to it. Now, I value my individuality,
who I am. I don't wanna lose that. I don't wanna be just another chip in an
array, if you know what I mean."
Jamie softened. "Billy, remember that seafood pizza in Bandon? I
told you that your musicianship would be an important factor here?"
"Yeah."
"Well, when you play in a band, you are integrated into the
ensemble. You're a vital part to the music, but you never loose your
personality, do you? You never forget who you are. 'Billy' never dies, does
he?"
"No."
"Well, we’re not all going to be psychically linked. We aren’t
now—there was no ethereal mass mind-meld instigating our various
projects. And it won’t happen if, no, when we succeed. The opposite,
really. It's strange to say, but your own individuality, your own true sense
of self, manifests itself profoundly. I was shocked at that manifestation
myself, when I first awoke to a Greater World." More she did not say about
that. "But I'm dealing with it, getting used to it, even enjoying it. Hon,
there's nothing to worry about there, trust me. This problem with
Hinterland, Doltman, and their cronies, that's something to worry about."
Kathryn, who continued to mope, looking at James, then the floor,
then James again, mumbled, "Yeah, well, what can we do about it?
"You guys? Not much. I'll run interference as best I can, and you
all keep pushing the project. Just what you want, right? More pressure, I

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know. But the bottom line is, if they trace you through me, and if they get
organized, what happened at Tech can happen here."
This was more than Jamie had said to them as a group than she
had in the last two months. The MIVI team, although worried about the
consequences of the Machiavellian machinations of these politicians, was
visibly relieved that Jamie was back to the Jamie they knew. She
continued, "I was going to..."
At that moment the lights flickered once, then again, then the
anteroom, Billy's lab, Berkeley, and the entire region from the Bay Area
down to Santa Cruz went back to pre-industrial natural lighting.

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 Chapter 40
"I know, I know, but what will it do to our numbers?"
Congressman Doltman was staring at the first reports scrolling on the
monitor next to the face of his chief of staff. The face spoke: "I think we
got to the media in time for damage control."
Breaking news had interrupted the morning game and talk shows
with live coverage of the test firing into polar orbit of a Doltman Hammer
rocket pack from the old Vandenburg Air Force Launch facility. After the
missile ménage e trois disappeared above the Pacific clouds, the networks,
having reached the three-minute attention span limit, returned to their
regularly scheduled programming. Consequently, when the one of the aged
rockets failed, hurtled back to Earth and destroyed the San Gregorio power
plant and denied Central California TV viewers their daytime dramas, not
to mention silencing every other electrically run appliance and industry,
there was no national coverage. It also hobbled the local media so that the
military and Republicratic politicians had time to interject their own
explanations.
"It's a good thing that rocket had no warhead," returned Ernie
Martirez, "Think of the consequences! We'd never be able to cover it up.
The cloud would be seen for miles. Damn bad luck that it fell on that
plant."
Doltman sat for a minute. "Hmm, no explosion? Just an impact?
Several dozen 'loyal' workers killed?"
"True enough. Of course, power outages north to almost
Sacramento. Only temporary though."

"Maybe we can turn this to our advantage. What if we say a piece

of that meteor fell on the power plant? It would make this whole thing
seem all the more real, make our efforts seem all that more heroic. Hey, it's
already taken the lives of good honest working people."
Ernie had to admire the savvy of his boss. What balls! Turning a
major disaster into a political selling point. "What about the wreckage?
Someone's sure to find rocket parts."
"Have the military cordon off the area. Call it an environmental
catastrophe. I checked; I know San Gregorio is natural gas fueled, but we
can say that the meteor is radioactive or something."
Ernie lit up. "Sure! We've never used that angle before. That'll
keep everyone away. We can say it's got a, what d'ya call it? A half-life of
50 years. That'll keep everyone away for a century."
"Good thinking, boy. So what if you didn't pass that Physical
Science class?" Ernie's eyes widened. "Ha ha! Yes, I did read your

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transcripts! Don't worry; you learned enough important stuff to help us out
here big time."
Congressman Doltman sat back in his chair. "I'll call a General
who owes me big time out there, have him deploy his men. You get a press
conference set up for the noon news, West Coast time. Get me something
sincere to say too, not too long. I plan on being overcome with grief for our
loss."
"Will do boss." Ernie signed off and immediately went to work,
still marveling at the keen political acumen of that congressman, and
maybe future president.

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 Chapter 41
Shortly after the lights went out, a boom, then a muffled rumble
shook Billy's lab. His equipment, shielded from power surges by a hefty
UPS, shut down politely. Sareena was first to breathe. "What was that? An
earthquake?"
"There's not supposed to be any..." Jamie said, mostly to herself.
Given her recent revelations she was hesitant to rely on her memory. "That
first noise was a sonic boom." But the blast?
Billy spoke. "I'd say that the other noise was a power plant
explosion, seeing as how we're in the dark. But the nearest plant is, oh,
sixty-seventy miles away. We'd never be able to hear a blast from this far
away, not unless every cubic foot of gas went off at the same time. I've got
a friend working there, it's the San Gregorio Power Plant. She told me once
that there are too many safety valves, and the tanks are too far apart, for
that to happen. Not unless a big bomb..." Billy stopped and stared at Jamie.
"Do you think someone blew up the plant?"
"Well, I wouldn't put it past Hinterland, or Doltman, but it would
serve no purpose."
"Let me get my Sat-Link off my bike. Maybe we can find
something on-line about it."
Billy left to retrieve his gear as the group adjourned to a brighter
room. "Good thing I charged this yesterday. Hadn't been using it recently,
but I had a notion that I might need it." He couldn't share it with the rest, so
he donned the headset and called up a search engine of the standard news
outlets. Most were silent about the event, so brief a time had elapsed since
the outage, but after about five minutes word began to leak out. A news-
anchor avatar popped up in his virtual space, relaying the latest news.
"Something has fallen onto the San Gregorio plant. No telling
what," Billy reported. "That'd be about the only thing that could take out
the whole thing at once," he mumbled worriedly. Clearly he was thinking
about his friend there.
"That would explain the shock wave," said Jamie. She wanted to
say something to Billy about his friend, but he was still in NetSpace and
couldn't hear.
"Some guy, that congressman you mentioned, will be speaking
shortly about it. Why not the President?" asked the engineer.
Jamie answered his question to the others. "Because he must have
had some foreknowledge of this, and had already scheduled the press
conference. Boy! That'll hurt our President in the polls. His last year of his
first term? His electoral demise is already being orchestrated. Like I said,
our brief epoch of rationality is coming to a close."

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 The lights flickered on, then back off as the power company
struggled to compensate for the loss of wattage. Billy pulled off his gear.
"I've got to call Selena," referring to his friend at power plant. He checked
his phone; it showed signal. "I think the Sat system is unaffected, since I
can access the Net from here." He went off to the side, out of earshot of the
others, who sat in silence. Long minutes went by as Kathryn held James'
hand, and Sareena looked confused and annoyed simultaneously. Jamie
held her head in her hands, wondering what could happen next that she had
not foreseen.
Billy came back with a look of relief clear to all. "Selena was
driving to the plant when I called. Her power's out too." Just then the lights
and equipment in the lab flashed on confidently. "She..." His phone rang.
"Yeah?...What!...How many? OK, keep in touch. Bye babe." Billy looked
at Jamie. "Selena got to the plant, and there're soldiers blocking the gate!
From what she says, they're trying to get the place surrounded. Helicopters
are landing all over the facility. What the hell is going on?"
Kathryn had finally let go of James to go inside and turn on the
TV. Jamie peered into the anteroom and said, "I don't know, but the local
junk news is all a-twitter about something."
At Billy's command wallscreen had fluttered to life and adjusted
itself to display several of the local channels as well as a network feed. All
except one showed an empty podium with an expectant microphone. (The
lone holdout had refused to break away from its midday show, "Baby
Showers Around the World".) He had muted the sound until something
happened, but all the adults in the room could imagine the grave, hushed
tones from the various voice-over reporters, not unlike commentators at a
golf tournament.
When a (freshly) disheveled Congressman Doltman stumbled up
to the mic Billy unmuted one of the news channels, but just for contrast he
left the picture of "Baby Showers" on the wall. The politician spoke:
"I don't know where to begin. We believe that the unthinkable has
happened. We believe that a piece of the object that is hurtling towards an
immanent collision with our fair Moon has broken off and crashed to
Earth."
He paused while the crowd of reporters gasped as one. In
Berkeley Jamie spoke first. "Bullshit! Asteroids don't randomly fall apart.
Besides," she thought for a moment, "JMS 2032's trajectory is all wrong.
Maybe something fell, but not part of that asteroid."
"Sshh!" hushed Kathryn with a wink as Doltman continued.
"Regrettably, our nation's astronomers gave us no warning of this
impending disaster." He silently praised Ernie for that dig. "Fortunately,
the giant rock didn't land on a highly populated area, or the damage and
loss of life would have been much, much worse. But as it is, the event is a

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major catastrophe for California, and indeed the nation. Because,
comrades, this piece from the hell of space smashed and utterly destroyed
the recently completed San Gregorio Central Power Station, plunging the
mid-California Coast up to the Bay Area into darkness."
The contradiction in this last statement, given that the impact
occurred midday, was lost in the drama of the speech.
"But it's worse than that friends. For this rock from space was
radioactive, emitting lethal M-rays..."
Jamie exploded. "Utter fucking bull-fucking-shit! Oops, sorry
Sareena. Asteroids are not radioactive, and there's no such thing as
freaking M-rays! What the hell..."
"SShhhhh!!"
"...in time. With the critical assistance of General Bruce Lloyd of
the Air Attack Rangers, the crash site is surrounded, and we'll keep
everyone safe, not to worry. The government will be there to clean up the
radioactive debris and dispose of it properly. But..." Doltman turned away
from the cameras and appeared to break down. "... excuse me. But there is
tragedy here. About two dozen power workers of Local 12 were killed in
the explosion..." Again he turned away for effect. "This, this disaster on the
very day of the first successful test launch from Vandenburg of the missile
system that will destroy that damned angel from hell! Excuse me..."
Jamie's eyes narrowed. "I smell rat shit, a big steaming pile of it!"
Kathryn playfully covered Sareena's ears. The girl wiggled free.
"Hey! I've heard all these words before. What are you talking
about Jamie?"
"I don't think any 'rock from space' fell on San Gregorio. That
facility is downrange from Vandenburg for a polar orbital launch. I think
their antique rockets failed and did a sub-orbital, falling back down onto
the plant. That's why we heard a sonic boom earlier, just before the bang.
Hmmm, there's a way to check. Hey Billy, can you call your friend back
and ask her if she can get to a high point to check for an impact crater?
Only a solid chunk of something would make a noticeable crater. Spent
rocket boosters would disintegrate on impact, making no appreciable hole
in the ground, but causing all the damage they alluded to."
"Sure, I'll call her..."
"Gees! You don't think they test fired with a live warhead, do
you? Is that radiation he was talking about?" interrupted James.
"SSSSSSSHHHHHHHH!"
"...Rest assured we will be vigilant, we will endeavor to
persevere, and we will prevail. This first attack from space will not deter
us. Our missiles will avenge us, and keep Earth...and her daughter...safe!"
Doltman shouted between sobs. What a performance! "I'm sorry, I can't say
any more now. Excuse me."

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 Billy hurriedly muted the wall before the commentors could fall
over each other in a contest of melodrama. Jamie ventured, "We can only
hope that they aren't that stupid. We can't know unless we get a meter near
the site though, and we don't have time for that now." Billy stuck a finger
in his other ear while he spoke to Selena. Shortly, "She'll check. There's
not much high ground nearby, but she has a RC model plane with a
camera. What a girl! She'll take some pictures and let us know."
"So what do we do now?" asked Sareena. Math and programming
made perfect sense to her, but the arcane motivations of politics, the deceit,
the deception--these were things she didn't understand, and never wanted
to.
Kathryn, back on James' arm, with fearsome resolution, said, "We
work."

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 Chapter 42
Nothing focuses the mind like the hangman's noose, thought
Kathryn. She had kissed James goodbye over an hour ago, but his taste
lingered on her lips. Not his own taste really: he started many a morning
with a mixture of egg whites and salsa, a recently acquired taste. But
Kathryn came to associate that flavor with his kiss.
Billy was installing the latest drivers from Sareena into the MIVI
engine. The girl frequently worked through the night, coding without any
sense of time. It was the way she always worked, and it was what was
needed now, immersion in her work. Truth to tell, Sareena had gotten to
the point of anticipating the updates before Billy even knew what he
needed. She had gotten the ebb and flow, the beat of his enterprise, and
they had locked in tighter than any rhythm section ever could. Just as she
had played off the cantus firmus of James' mathematics. In that way, she's
closer to him than I am, Kathryn thought enviously.
She examined that feeling. Envy, not jealousy. Something had
changed in the last couple of days.
Billy finally rebooted the system and Kathryn put these thoughts
from her mind as best she could. She had found it harder and harder to
concentrate; ironically, since each successive test got easier and easier for
her. She too had established a rapport with the engineer. Each tweak of the
equipment made it easier for Kathryn to alter some small aspect of her
reality. Billy had watched and listened to his Mobius Space-pilot as she
had first changed the color of her hair, then the style of her clothes, her
age, finally becoming her Asian alter-ego again a few days ago. He began
to pre-sense the delicate balance of power she controlled with her interface
to change herself, and adjusted the processors, projectors, generators and
interface controls to match Kathryn's paths through Mobius Space. The
two moved towards cadence points as surely as any Baroque consort. And
the performance hadn’t yet reached the last movement.
The goal today was to actually fold local space into a manifold.
This was a big step, since it would alter reality for both Billy and herself,
and was kind of scary for Kathryn. For if she failed, perhaps nothing would
happen, and they'd try again. But if she succeeded, and then failed to
control the fold, Billy might be left in an unknown state. However, it was
necessary for them both to experience the manifold, so the heat was on.
The plan was for both of them to experience Kowloon Park, a
replay of the virtual trip that had changed Kathryn's life. Then it had been a
simulated experience--stunning in its reality, but virtual nonetheless. Now,
she and Billy would actually exist in the park, see the flamingos and the
Banyan trees, feel the heat and humidity of Summer in Hong Kong.
Kathryn would be in control--hopefully--for the duration, and they would

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leave a sign behind as a reality check. As a double-blind measure, they
wouldn't decide on the sign until they had arrived at the park.
When Kathryn worked for EVR, she used more-or-less standard
force-feedback actuators with an off-the-shelf control surface interface.
Billy's Virtual Thumb was only a receiver, albeit highly sophisticated, and
the early trials with the new MIVI weren't unusual, being a test of various
subsystems. Then they had not tried to manipulate Mobius Space; now all
these VR experiences synergized, hopefully giving her the power to alter
reality. That she had already been able to physically change herself in the
lab last week was an impressive achievement.
Sareena's latest patch allowed greater control of the space-bending
energy fields from the human interface. Jamie had used subcutaneous
implants to transmit biofeedback to Kathryn when they used the Virtual
Thumb, but Kathryn wasn't comfortable with implants. Besides, MIVI was
about control, not telemetry. From her perspective, neither was all that far
from her EVR Body Double. Telemetry and remote control are the yin and
yang in the data stream universe, she mused. The interface Billy had built
for her was a patch that stuck onto the nape of her neck under her medium-
length blonde hair, with very fine wires under her blouse to a powerful
transmitter on her belt. While she did have a panel at her fingertips, it was
auxiliary to the inductive sensor over her spinal cord. This way she
operated the processors and lensing apparatus that contorted and focused
the ZPE flowing from Dr. Vong's generator.
Despite the significance of this test, the two worked without
fanfare. They went over the checklists, which really was to confirm that the
computers had completed their POSTs and had booted the operating
system. Next, the processors were given dummy routines to make sure that
they were up to handling the huge numbers that James' math and Sareena's
drivers required. Early on, they had crashed with the apparent 'divide-by-
zero' errors that were inevitable when 200th order of magnitude values
were used as divisors. Subsequent refinement of Exalogs and the corollary
updates of code eliminated these errors, but given the consequences of
misdirected energies, Billy took no chances. In fact, he was at the point
where he wanted additional human monitoring of the process; next time, he
thought.
Finally he was satisfied that everything was nominal, and he
'turned on the juice', as he called it. Terawatts of power coursed through
the containment field, co-generators catching most of the leakage
demanded by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But the equipment
couldn't store this energy for long, so he OKed Kathryn to go ahead and 'do
her thing'. Just what she did at this time was hard for her to describe. It was
a mix of visualizing, subvocalizing, and daydreaming, a conglomeration of
all her diverse VR experience. Occasionally she poked at her panel, but

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this was just a manifestation of something she had already envisioned. At
first, for a brief moment, she was in a familiar NetSpace, a routine Billy
added as a final systems check. All was well, she was in control, and
without prelude the lab blinked like a video with a bad connection, once,
twice, and the two were standing in Kowloon Park.
Billy's first sensation was that of heat: stifling, oppressive, humid
heat. He had been born and raised on the West Coast, and had lived in
Santa Cruz for years. Cool and damp, that's what he was used to, so
saturated, 37oC air struck him like an enormous wet hot-towel. A fraction
of a second later he realized Damn! I'm really here! and all heat-related
discomfort vanished.
"Ho-ly shit! It works!" he cried. "Ho-ly shit!" He looked at his
partner.
Kathryn was wearing a wry smile, seeming oblivious to their
accomplishment. She thought again, Envy, not jealousy. She has a
closeness I don't have. Kathryn immediately scolded herself. Stop that!
Concentrate on the task at hand! But she could not summon 100% of her
mind; it would not obey. A closeness, period. Not a closeness with James,
it whispered. SNAP! She winked out of existence for an instant, then back
in as she regained her composure.
"Hey! Where'd ya go?" Billy's startled cry snapped her to focus,
literally. "I turned around and you were gone, then turned around again and
you were back. What's going on?"
"Nothing, just having a bit of trouble maintaining. You OK?"
"Sure, just kinda surprised me. I'm used to that in NetSpace, but
we're really here, you know?"
"Yeah, we really are," she said with all the awe she could muster.
"Let me check that transmitter. Maybe it's dropping data, although
there's a transponder nearby." Jamie had recently left one surreptitiously at
Sareena's flat.
"Seems to be a clean signal, and your gear's operating at spec.
Hey! I want to walk around a bit, you know. And leave that message too.
But I'm worried about your status. Can you hold on? Do you want me to
stick around?"
"No, I'll be OK. Don't be gone too long though, just in case."
"OK." He was visibly eager. "Back in a few minutes."
Billy wandered off to explore the park, leaving Kathryn alone. He
had never been to Hong Kong before, and was fascinated, almost giddy.
Standing on the bridge over the flamingo pond, Kathryn stared down into
the still water. Indian tourists were feeding the fish some distance away,
and the ripples hadn't reached her reflection yet. It seemed so long ago that
she had "visited" the park on her last job for Exxtasy VR. On a whim, she
concentrated and in a blink her Chinese alter-ego was staring up back at

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her from the pond. What did that client see in her, she wondered. What was
he---that sneaky woman!
It had finally dawned on Kathryn that her last client had been
Jamie all along. She had never seen her customer, and even if she had
Jamie could have disguised herself in any fashion she chose. "Hmmph,"
said her Asian reflection. "Why haven't I thought of this already? I was
manipulated into this position. And damn, the accent still has me!" Kathryn
hated the idea of being controlled, but couldn't bring herself to be angry
with Jamie. Their friendship was real, of that she was certain. However,
she needed to vent a bit. No one was looking at her. "She became me that
day. Ah, revenge is sweet!" Another moment of concentration and the
Chinese reflection became Jamie. "Two can play at that game!"
She laughed loudly and tossed her long brown hair, causing the
Indian tourists to look at her curiously. She could see that appreciation in
the eyes of the men in that group. This changing takes almost no effort
now. Kathryn-as-Jamie looked back at the water. Hmmmm, maybe like this
I can spy on James and Sareena. But she found that she really didn't care
about that anymore. So, Maybe I can get you into trouble Miss Jamie; do
something embarrassing. Take off my shirt in Exhibition Park, the perfect
place for it! But No, you're under enough stress. All the...
A revelation was bursting upon her mind. Amazed, Kathryn
locked gazes with the Jamie reflection and saw Kathryn looking out from
Jamie's face. My God! Was I the cause of her trouble? Did we get linked
somehow with the Thumb? Was it a two-way thing? Kathryn thought hard:
yin and yang. She remembered the words that James said Jamie had yelled
at Sareena and him that day. Exactly what I would have said! Talk about
control! The poor girl.
Kathryn snapped back to being Kathryn, unconcerned who might
be looking. She felt enormously guilty about what she had done,
unconsciously, to her best friend. Had Jamie known what was going on at
the time? Girl we really need to have a long talk.
Shortly Billy came bouncing down the path to the bridge. "I left a
message at McDonald's for our verification. It says 'How can you be in two
places at once when you're not anywhere at all?'. Hope that's OK. It's the
title of an old song. Shit, you know this is the coolest thing! Nothing in
NetSpace compares to it. I can't wait 'til...hey! What's wrong?" Billy finally
noticed the look she had on her own face.
"Nothing. Well, something, but nothing I can deal with here. Let's
go home."
Before Billy could protest, Kathryn glanced around and Kowloon
Park became Billy's lab. The woman flashed another wry smile at her
engineer and hurried out the door.

- 165 -
 Chapter 43
Named after the 19th Century Berkeley University President (and
ex-Confederate), LeConte Hall had housed the Physics Department on the
Cal Berkeley campus for years, professional home for the likes of
physicists Raymond Thayer Birge, Buford Price, and Young-Kee Kim.
Room 375 echoed with freshman seminars such as "The Big Bang and the
Early Universe". The third floor walls were still adorned with research
posters, the air scented with Tea and Cookies. The Center for Particle
Astrophysics was still housed in LeConte, though its outreach to the
Longfellow Arts & Technology Middle School had withered away years
ago. Not the fault of CfPA: Longfellow itself had been closed around 2012
for "lack of diversity." And if you listened carefully, really carefully, you
could still hear, faintly, Don Orlando rendering an aria from his 111 lab, a
ghost-song from decades earlier.
On Saturday night the LeConte Building stood vacant of
professors, post-docs, grad assistants, and students. Automation ran the
experimentation that never seemed to end, but seeing as how it was Labor
Day weekend, humans, mostly those who would become Mentors, had left
to enjoy themselves as best they could, given the circumstances of
impending social unrest, political upheaval, nuclear disaster, not to
mention imminent Lunacide.
On Saturday night LeConte Hall stood proudly. By Sunday
morning it was a pile of rubble.
__________________________

Al Hinterland couldn't believe his eyes when he tuned in the

Sunday newsprograms and found every one on the Berkeley campus,
cameras trained on the remains of some building. At first he thought that
another rocket had failed, but quickly remembered that the next test was
not for a few days. Besides, he quickly deduced that this test was 'live',
meaning with a warhead. Surely the whole East Bay would be a cinder had
that gone wrong.
His phones were beeping wildly, and the email light was
continuously lit. He needed to get a handle on what happened first, before
talking to anyone, so he turned up the volume and listened intently, not
only for content but also for delivery. Were people outraged? Complacent?
The news people would echo the sentiment, and this is what was important,
not facts.
The reporters on scene were interviewing campus officials and
local denizens. From what Al gathered, some militant group was claiming
responsibility for the destruction of this building and was threatening to
bomb facilities at Stanford and other elite universities. The Cal officials

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were understandably aghast at the carnage, the waste, but the reaction from
the rest of the crowd was quite different. Far from any kind of public
outcry, the locals expressed satisfaction and were in sympathy with the
bombers, saying things like "Never did trust what those people were doing
in there," "Proper folks don't think about stuff like that. There are things we
weren't meant to know," and "It was an evil place, and I'm glad to see it
gone."
This whole anti-scientist movement he and his nephew had
concocted was succeeding beyond his wildest imagination. They could
blow up fucking buildings and register crowd approval! This act of
rejection of all things intellectual, and the subsequent tacit approval by the
masses, had given them carte blanche in courses of action. He and his
people could bend any law, ignore any social convention, violate any code
of decency they wanted to in pursuit of office.
"Who the hell did this?" he swore at the screen, but the answer
was not forthcoming. He decided to answer his private phone, the one
outside the teleco network's billing system. Sure enough, it was Ernie.
"Uncle Al! Are you seeing this?"
"Shit yeah! Amazing! Do you know who did this? I'd like to kiss
them! I had no idea that we'd touched so deep a nerve."
Ernie glanced down at another screen. "My sources say it's a
bunch of back-to-nature socialists called the People's Luddite Liberation
Front. Never heard of 'em, but I'm told that they are connected 'spiritually'
to the radical environmentalists of the last century."
"Well, whatever. They did what I never would have done. The
backlash if traced to me would have been political death. Speaking of
which, anyone die in the blast?"
"Just some foreign students. Their parents will never get any
significant screen time in this country. Not to worry."
Al responded, "All the same, we should send condolences, maybe
make a statement blaming dangerous research or something." He sat back
and exhaled loudly. "Shit. First, you and your boss turn one explosion into
a rallying point, and now another explosion solidifies our support. I think I
set my sights too low this year. I should have been running for Governor!"
"Give it a couple of years, and we'll back you all the way," said
Ernie, confident that his credibility and power in the Doltman organization
would be sufficient to fulfill his promise.
Al asked, "Lad, can you get me about 100 protestors by
Wednesday? No wait, how about 100 here, 100 up in Berkeley, and maybe
Pasadena too? If I spread the word that there will be mass rallies at various
elitist institutions, maybe these People's Luddites will get ideas and blow
more stuff up. The more chaos the better, almost like back in '92 when we
rigged the Rodney King trial. I need this because my own people have

- 167 -
traced that Jamie woman and her friend to a clandestine laboratory near
Cal Berkeley. She probably has some more cronies there as well. And there
is a hint that somehow she's gotten into our secret accounts. The bitch!
Don't ask me how, because there's no paper or fresh digital trail to follow,
just a series of suspicious coincidences. Difficult to prosecute in normal
times, but we can change that."
"Now, if people are near rioting, if buildings are exploding, I can
arrest her on even the slimmest pretense, citing some marshal law
circumstance. And I'll be able to grab her pointy-headed scientist friends,
hold them up as examples of the perversion allowed by a hands-off
government. Boy, I can rip them to shreds! I can even blame all the civil
unrest on them, cite them as a subversive influence on society. People love
getting away with destruction by putting the blame for their actions on
someone's 'provocation'. "Oh, society made me do it". One of the best
excuses my predecessors ever came up with."
"I can do better than that Uncle," beamed Ernie. "I can get most of
the security personnel to go on strike next week. Most major university
security services were forced to hire union workers; Congressman Doltman
is owed big-time by them. I can arranged a sick-out on any day you want,
in 'sympathy' for the lost union workers at San Gregorio."
"Outstanding! Out-fucking-standing! Boy, we've got work to do,
fast! Keep in the closest touch these next few days, so we can coordinate
efforts. It may be 2033, but the Millennium is upon us!"

- 168 -
 Chapter 44
The destruction of the LeConte Building did little to assuage the
anger of the People's Luddite Liberation Front. On the contrary, their
success emboldened them, and their protests attracted many more
followers across the country. Rumors ran wild of destruction of facilities at
MIT, of attacks on scientists at JPL, even the encirclement of the Annealia
Sargent Memorial Space Research Center in the Owens Valley by a
caravan of Winnebagos, its occupants armed with a six-pack and a shot-
gun. Security had been tightened wherever it could, but the security guards
were all members of a Republicratically controlled union, and would do
little to protect property or even the lives of the new 'enemy of the people'.
Dr. Vong was worried, not so much for her life as for the projects
that held out the only real hope of survival for both branches of the
bifurcating human race. If the hastily scrawled crude threats against the
Lawrence Berkeley Labs were acted upon, her friend Jamie and the MIVI
team would be dead in the water. No new ZPE generator could be brought
on-line before Doltman's Hammer was to be launched. That there was
another test of the ill-conceived missile defense in a couple of days heaped
urgency upon crisis.
________________________________

They say that 87 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature of anger.

Below that threshold people can cool themselves adequately; any warmer
and it's just too hot to move. But at that particular level of thermal energy,
anger surfaces. Anger at the world, anger at the job, anger at the kids,
anger at the spouse, anger without even a cause.
Here in early August a muggy airmass had settled over all of
Northern California. Temperatures in the interior valleys exceeded body
temperature daily, and due to the humidity, didn't relent much by night.
Right at the coast the Pacific mitigated the heat only a little, and the Bay
area felt more like Puerto Villarta that Puerto de San Francisco.
Down at Vandenburg the launch crews for the next test of
Doltman's Hammer had been praying for moderate weather: these old
missiles were finicky about heat and moisture. The facilities had grown old
and cranky from disuse in the decades since ICBMs ceased to be a threat to
world populations, and technicians ran around constantly fixing the cooling
equipment and drying any exposed wiring. Had they been engineers rather
than technicians, they would have seen the danger in launching an aging
rocket, even un-armed, under these conditions, but level of training
required for an engineering degree had become prohibitive for most
people, no matter how much the bar was lowered. Unions had fought this
"discrimination" tooth and nail, and had recently lobbied successfully to

- 169 -
allow holders of a two-year certificate to maintain certain government
technology, antique missiles included. Such was the confidence that these
technicians had in Doltman's Hammer and the righteousness of their cause,
that warning lights were routinely ignored, and safety measures were
regularly circumvented. The warhead would be detonated in space,
regardless of the dangers. The launch would take place today!
The test launch was not on the minds of the crowd assembling on
Cyclotron Blvd, stewing in the stifling, humid air. Doltman's troops turned
out in force, sweating profusely in the late-summer heat wave, growing
more annoyed as the sun climbed higher and higher. Their numbers
attracted bystanders, erstwhile students, and street people, eager to lash out
at whatever demon du jour the protest organizers had produced. "Today's
featured Enemy of the Common Man is <fill in the blank>." Today in
Berkeley, California, the target of opportunity was the laboratory of one
Dr. Vong, location supplied by one Al Hinterland.
Ernie had been true to his word: striking security workers joined
the gathering mob for the march on LBL, a fact not lost on the People's
Luddite Liberation Front. To them, the sheepdog had left the flock to fend
for itself, and, not satisfied with the ambient high temperatures, they were
preparing a little brimstone chaser for the mob's anger binge.
To put the proper sympathetic face on the "demonstration", and to
pay off a debt, Ginny Cesar had been flown in by Hinterland to stir up the
troops. Ginny had missed the riot at CalTech, and was owed her five
minutes in the limelight. She spoke about the unfair treatment the elitist
faculty had given her, denying her the right to hire based on her own
impeccable standards, firing her for innocently editing applications,
consigning her to a less powerful position, (albeit at a higher wage--
unmentioned in her speech). Ginny spat the names of those "damn
scientists", at CalTech and here at Berkeley, who said they were doing
research but who were probably practicing some kind of obscene rituals in
defiance of the laws of nature, as seen in so many TV dramas of late.
"Pornographic", "sacrilegious" she called their work, work that would
"threaten our children" if allowed to continue.
Ginny tried to stretch her five minutes of notoriety, but the 87
degrees did its job, and the mob started to abandon her and march up
Cyclotron Blvd. Unbeknownst to the marchers, the PLLF had already
arrived at Dr. Vong's building and were lighting the fuse.
____________________________________

All was in readiness for this most important powering-up of the

Mobius Space equipment. The last run had given the team the confidence
to push for "critical folding" as Jamie called it, not to mention the urgency
forced upon them by dangerous circumstances beyond their control. If

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everything worked right, Kathryn should be able to fold these events back
on themselves, reassigning them as circumstances under their control.
Then, the next test would determine if they could stitch the patchwork of
the Greater World into one fabric.
All of them were now at Billy's lab. Sareena hadn't needed to
adjust her last upgrade of drivers, and Billy's MIVI interface seemed to be
operating at 105%. The two of them poured over the controls, mostly with
Billy directing the girl in procedures while on the phone with Dr. Vong,
adjusting the ZPE power flow. Jamie stood off to the side, silently
observing her crew, not wanting to tell them that Hinterland's accountants
had found her tap into their larcenous slush fund. They had found the tap
and plugged it, leaving her with reserves adequate for a week, no more.
But it was only a matter of days now before they found this lab and
replayed their Burbank farce on a grander scale. Things had to happen, and
real soon.
Kathryn and James embraced and kissed a long kiss before she
plugged in. As she went through her checklist, the conflict within her made
it difficult to concentrate on the crucial procedures to initiate folding. She
had not expressed her suspicions about the unintended feedback that may
have impacted Jamie so deeply, and the guilt was growing, festering,
infecting her mind. It melded with the turmoil about her relationship that
already sapped at her concentration.
She had completed the primary interface and was... I do love
James, but something's not right. I just don't feel complete. She shook
herself mentally and tried to focus. The pressure! Billy said just before she
hooked in that the military rocket was almost ready to launch; they all
feared the consequences. Jamie had been unsure in the last few months,
ever since she came back from Hong Kong. She'd bounced back just
recently, but...What had happened? Did my feedback screw things up that
bad? If we blow it it'll be all my fault. James...
______________________________

The humidity at Vandenburg was unusual, given that it wasn't fog.

Moisture condensed on the fuel tanks, dripping into the motors and leaking
onto the electronics that controlled the thrust vectoring. "Aw, the heat of
the engines'll burn that stuff off in a second" was the pronouncement of the
lead launch engineer. It was time to kick some stellar ass!
"Countdown from 60, starting....NOW!" The 20th Century
automation that hadn't been upgraded for decades churned away on it
launch check program, faithfully sending commands to all the onboard
computers. The flatscreens displayed a 'go' in almost every corner. Certain
indicators were yellow, warning that some systems were in an unknown
state: the warhead safeties, for instance. Also, moisture sensors in the

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motor assembly flashed red, but these annoyances were over-ridden by the
humans in attendance.
Quickly, the chronographs ticked off the last ten seconds, echoed
dramatically by Ernie Martirez himself. He had flown in the previous night
to attend the launch, representing the namesake of Doltman's Hammer. His
boss was on the line as he intoned, "Three, Two, One, Launch!" One of the
union leaders, a major Doltman contributor, ceremoniously pressed a big
red button installed for him to press. The primary computer actually did the
deed, and the missile package leapt from the pad and headed due west
(wisely, to avoid a repeat of the previous fiasco) to the cheers of all in
attendance.
The primary computer could not cheer along with the humans, but
neither could it show concern for the immanent failure of two of the three
rockets.
_______________________________

Kathryn forced herself to return to her task. She wouldn't be the

weak link in this chain. She had never done anything important, anything
that mattered. Oh, she had been self-sufficient, mostly, except when she
was with Leon. And she had been a good actress, one with great potential.
That was why she was here, according to Jamie. "See? Billy is a great
musician, but also a brilliant engineer. You can be both," she had told her.
Kathryn tried to believe that, both for herself and since it was vitally
important that she became a great "pilot". But then, this whole Mobius
project was just a catalyst, Jamie said. I miss that below-the-skin closeness
I had with her when we hitched. Why don't I feel that closeness with
James? Shouldn't I feel that way? If Jamie was right, and they broke
through into the Greater World, would we connect as closely as I need?
Would he change his mind? Could she change his mind? James...
________________________________________

The energy density of gasoline made it difficult to replace as a

fuel. The distribution system had been in place for over a century, and
neither batteries nor hydrogen fuel cells had supplanted its dominance in
the personal transportation field. And at 43 megajoules per liter, it could
make a hell of a bang if detonated properly.
The People's Luddite Liberation Front had gotten hold of an old
military study (surreptitiously dropped in their laps by a Doltman minion)
that showed a small amount of gasoline could make superior bomb if it
was misted into a space and then ignited. The PLLF members decided to
make their statement in this fashion, spraying a fine mist of high octane via
compressed air paint sprayer locked open in the foyer of some Lawrence
Berkeley National Lab building. Which one didn't really matter, and since

- 172 -
they were out to destroy technology, they chose (arbitrarily they thought: a
word in the right ear had influenced their decision) the building that housed
Dr. Vong's equipment. That she might be injured or killed didn't weigh too
heavily on their minds. What they didn't want to do was hurt their
supporters, who were just coming into sight. The Luddites had to hurry!
Storming into the foyer like an evil tornado, masked and reeking
of gasoline, the PLLF troops scared the holy crap out of the support
workers manning the front desk. They scattered out side doors and
windows, some stopping long enough to yell desperate warnings to the
occupants of nearby offices.
Most left without further urging. Most, except for Dr. Vong, who
was locked away in isolation, feeding ZPE to Billy's equipment when the
bombers detonated the gasoline mist with a flare gun.
________________________________________

"Kathryn, keep it real," she heard Billy say with a trace of irony.
Don't stress me anymore! But she knew he was just gently prompting.
Can't you see I'm conflicted here? No, I guess you can't. Trouble with
being a good actress, you can hide any emotion. James never had much
emotion to hide. Why doesn't he...
She ran through the last of the procedures, and felt her
environment begin to change. At first it was as it should be: virtual spaces,
window-dressing, all much more vivid than the familiar NetSpace but
expected. She went though the progressive exercises she'd been practicing
since she'd been forcibly weaned from the Thumb. On the schedule was
real-time manipulation of the structures of space itself, to alter the various
parameters of normality that are maintained by computer in NetSpace.
Today she would make an actual alteration to the Real World; even
something small would be a huge success. The heat was on, and it wasn't
just the muggy air she and James had walked in coming over to the lab. I
wish he were in here with me. I feel so comfortable here that maybe I could
make him see.
_________________________________

The old but venerable flight control equipment had warned of the
possibility of systems failures, warnings that were dismissed by the staff,
so anxious were they to get the test underway. Now, not yet ten minutes
into the launch, the thrust vectoring computers for one of the boosters had
malfunctioned, locking the exhaust vents off at a slight angle. This
attracted the attention of one of the technicians.
"Sam, this line's not following the other one," she said, pointing to
the screen traces of the missile's projected and actual path. "What'll I do?"

- 173 -
 "Hmmm" mumbled the corpulent Director of Technical
Operations. "Seems to be going to the right. Try turning left." The young
technician twisted a small joystick on her console, and, thankfully, the tri-
pack of missile started to come around. But without first diagnosing why
the rockets' track had veered off, the fix complicated the problem. Now
there were two opposing forces on the package, two motors working
against the third, putting an enormous strain on the bindings that held them
together, and setting up murderous vibrations. Rocket 3's thruster vents
were the least robust of the trio, and quickly failed. Onboard computers
shut the propellant off and awaited abort instructions, which never came.
"Sir, it's wandering again."
"Shit. Where is it going now?"
"Looks like pretty much straight up."
"How high is it?"
She peered at the screen. "It says 38 k-m."
"Well, how high is that?"
"Don't ask me, I don't know what a k-m is. But it seems to be
slowing down."
"Why is that?" The corpulent Director pulled out a paper towel
from his pocket and started to mop his face, despite the air-conditioning.
"Don't know. But this light is red--it says 'Unit 3 fuel flow'."
"Maybe it's run out of gas."
While the humans pondered, the now unbalanced propulsion
tipped the rockets over before attaining orbital insertion, directing them
eastward but now about ten degrees of latitude greater. The torsional
stresses produced by the uneven thrust created shear stresses on the
weakened bindings that began to cut into the skin of the two functioning
rockets, right over the fuel tanks. Moments later hydrazine vented angrily
into the stratosphere.
"Sir, the fuel gauges are flashing yellow. I don't think we can
control it anymore, once the engines shut off."
"Where is it headed?"
"Down, back towards the coast."
"Where?!"
"I can't tell yet."
"Well, aim it straight down, before it runs out of gas. At least it
will crash into the ocean with no fuel left to explode."
Forgotten by the crew was the fact that the warhead arming
system was designed to activate when its delivery vehicle's engines ceased.
_________________________________

Suddenly all the window-dressing people stopped their pre-

programmed activities and turned to star at her. Their faces blurred, for a

- 174 -
moment, all had the mathematician's smile, his soft eyes, his low chuckle.
Then just as quickly they resumed their routines. Gees! Did I imagine that?
She looked around carefully--all was according to the log sheet. Kathryn
shivered, then tried to change the color of one of the houses on this
artificial street. Again the population stopped, changed, smiled, but this
time they dissolved in place. Something must be wrong with the gear. She
tried to contact Billy but couldn't make the connection. Dismay, then panic,
then...
Then things started to change. Radically, contradictorily. Hot but
cold, bright but dark, confined yet open. This was different than all the trial
runs she had experienced, and nothing like the hitching she did. Nothing
like NetSpace, ever. Complete sensory overload. James! The thought of
him and his nearness calmed her. Fear, a tangible color that had formed in
the space before her, was supplanted by wonder, manifested as beautiful
music. Sights, sounds, and smells were morphing around her like some
grand hallucination. Kathryn held up her hand and watched it change from
fin to flipper to paw to hand. Could the others see this?
_________________________________________

The PLLF had not the means nor the education to calculate the
explosive power of a room full of misted gasoline. Therefore, the blast was
unexpectedly violent, taking out the entire front wall of the structure,
leaving it looking like the exposed side of a doll house. Not since the
Oklahoma City van-bomb had such devastation been visited on a public
building. They perpetrators cheered as they picked themselves up after the
shockwave, and the approaching demonstrators stopped as one, a mixture
of horror and amazement on their faces.
Inside the lab, Dr. Vong was thrown to the floor. Relay racks full
of processors and generators tipped against each other; only the fact that
her building was seriously reinforced for earthquakes saved her from
having the whole lab cave in around her.
However, the damage was done. Power flickered once, twice,
while the UPS backups kicked in. They could only sustain the system long
enough for a smooth shutdown, about five minutes. She started shutdown
and opened the door, making plans to escape whatever had just happened.
But when she saw the flames rolling down the hall towards her,
Dr. Vong had to rethink that whole escape thing.
_________________________________________

Kathryn turned to look at her colleagues. They were frozen blurs,

much like time lapse photographs of headlights on the freeway. Is this
right? Have I screwed the pooch?

- 175 -
 Something was building up inside her, and at the same time
breaking down. She became the Asian woman she had been in Kowloon
Park, then snapped back to herself as a little girl, not blonde but with
Sareena's long dark hair. She looked back at the blur that was James and
saw on him a frozen stare of wonder. So he can see this!
Kathryn continued to watch her man, for hours that were seconds,
and saw him finally as he was. No projection of her fantasies, no canvas
for her imagery, no stage for her screenplay.
What have I done? What's going wrong... he will never be a
father. Realization! A hammer cocked...
______________________________________

"Oh shit, oh shit!" The launch crews' collective face had gone
ashen. Ernie Martirez, who had been standing aside from the consoles
talking up his union boss, caught wind of the horror coursing through the
technicians.
"What's going on?" he demanded.
"Sir, the rocket has had some trouble," said the young technician.
Her Director had just fainted and was a huge sweaty lump on the control
room floor. "First it went off to the right, then up. Then it headed back
towards us, sort of, but I tried to crash it into the ocean. But now my screen
says it's headed towards..."
Failure to understand the Physics of the propulsion and trajectory
had produced disastrous consequences. The last course correction before it
vented all its hydrazine had caused the missile pack to spiral wildly. And to
compound matters, strong upper level winds were pushing it back towards
the continent, canceling any effect the correction might have had.
"...the Golden Gate, as far as I can tell. Maybe just off the coast,
maybe in the bay, but..."
"How long?" Ernie whispered.
"Minutes. That's all this screen can tell me."
Minutes. Christ! Ernie thought. Think man, think! What do I tell
Doltman?
The Director of Technical Operations had been revived with a
whiff of smelling salts administered by another technician, heretofore
silent. He needed direction from the Director, fast. "Sir?" he said panicky
to the groggy fat man, "My screen monitors the warhead. All along it's
been green, and I didn't touch anything, I swear! But now all these lights
have gone red. I think that's bad."
"SHIT! Shut it off, whatever it is. Shut the fucking thing off!"
yelled the Director, wincing, holding his left shoulder, panting
dangerously.

- 176 -
 "I don't know how. Which button is it? I wasn't trained for this. I
was just supposed to watch things."
Ernie overheard. "Idiot! Read the damned labels! There must be
an off switch."
"Most of them say on and off, but all the other words are
confusing."
To the Director Ernie spit, "Does this mean that the fucking bomb
will explode?"
"I, I, aaaa..." The fat man started to respond, but fainted again, this
time dead away. The strain had been too much for his already overworked
heart. Remember a TV show he had once seen, Ernie proceeded to beat
with his fist on the dying man's chest, thinking only Who the hell can we
blame this on?
____________________________________

Concentrate, don't screw this up! Concen... his destiny is

elsewhere and elsewhen. A trigger squeezed...
I... but I love him...we need to part ways. She knew it finally, all
illusions gone. Such sadness she felt! Emotion overcame her; a charge
ignited.
______________________________

The good Doctor never figured that some external disaster would
be the cause of her death. She had always accepted that her research was
dangerous, considering the energies she regularly played with. If
something violent was to take her, she thought it would be a by-product of
her work. But what was this inferno? What could have exploded elsewhere
in the building?
Resigned, she sealed the door as best she could against the flames.
Maybe the fire department would arrive before the oxygen is used up. She
could hear the distant crashes of collapsing floors and walls in other parts
of the building. Before the oxygen is used up and the place falls on my
head. Just then, the lights failed as the UPS completed shutdown. For a
moment she was in darkness, with only the sound of atmosphere passing
under the door toward the waiting flames.
Then, to her greatest amazement, the ZPE generators suddenly
rebooted. Power indicators zoomed off-scale. As the air thinned from the
hungry fires outside, Dr. Vong watched the trunk lines flash spectra from
the far infrared to ultraviolet and back again. Astounded, choking, she saw
her equipment melt, no dissolve, giving off no heat.
Astonishing!

- 177 -
 Stunned and nearly suffocated, on the floor seeking the last
lungful of oxygen, she wondered as her lab sang with a thousand songs, is
this what it is like to die?
______________________________

Her mind dilated, and a new world was born. That which had
been growing inside Kathryn suddenly blossomed, like some enormous
sunflower. She removed her physical connections to the MIVI interface
and her world ex/imploded. Now unencumbered by the restrictions of
instrumentality, Kathryn found her degrees of freedom in time and space
expanding with every thought. Doors of perception opened, moments
crystallized like ships emerging from a fog, firelight filled her, its radiance
breaking through from inside to out all around her, tiny rotating beige
squares, triangles and other Euclidean shapes flitted around the light like
moths. Impossible music roared in her mind, becoming a tapestry,
becoming a space to live in. She thought, I've not screwed up! This is
success; we've done it! She knew it was finally the end of all their
elaborate plans, and the beginning of a greater reality. I have done my part;
I have a life to live; time to leave.
She turned first to James, mainly because of the connection
between them, now frayed to the breaking point. She was inside his head,
speaking to him with the voice she used in their bed. Love, I must go. My
feelings for you have been like the tide; once it flowed, now it ebbs, and
like the tides my feelings for you will persist. But this whole experience has
enriched me, and it has also changed me more than Jamie ever let on. I
can see my way more clearly now, where I came from and to where I'm
going. Call it destiny, but it is what it is. Until this moment I've lived a
small life, a meek life, an unimportant life. No carpe diem for me. That's all
changed now. I have needs.
Ah, James... You know, I once had a dream where I saw a little
boy with your face, and I thought he was ours. It made me very happy, it
made me feel complete. I realize now that you are that little boy. He is you.
You are still a child, many years younger than your age. A good thing for
you, a natural thing, but it's not for me. I need that child, and you are too
young to be the father. I will not be whole if I am childless. I hope you
understand; I must go.
And he felt her sadness engulf him. The earth seemed to tremble
beneath him, his mental footing gave way, he held his head in his hands
and tried to reconcile the wonder of the events around him with the pain of
immanent separation.
Then the rest joined with her. Sareena had watched Kathryn
morphing before, and to her the final change had been to Kathryn as her
mother, now dissolving, engulfed in an amber glow. Go do what you must

- 178 -
do, what you can do, to find happiness. We will always be here, safe thanks
to you, and you can come home anytime you like. Sareena finally realized
the consequences of this evolution into the Greater World, felt the
divergence between Kathryn and her own beloved tutor--funny how I think
of things in a mathematical way--and the wheels began turning.
Billy tore himself away from the equipment to watch Kathryn
blur, focus, reblur, refocus. "What's happening to you?" he asked.
"I don't know. It's sort of the 'eureka' you must feel Billy when
you make something that works. It's extraordinary, really. I'm sad, I'm
happy, and I see the paths and folds Jamie has talked about just as if they
were MIVI projections. But they are real, they are real! I can walk this
way or move that way. I feel connections between all of us, but I know we
are still individuals. Your worries about some loss of identity? That won't
be a problem. You're still you, I'm still me, but I'm more of me now than
before. See?"
Billy suddenly felt her all around him, like an ensemble of
Kathryns. The most intense resonance he had ever felt while playing music
paled in comparison. Time seemed to stand still, the air was electric--
another man might have fallen hopelessly in love in that perfect moment.
The bass player recognized it for what it was; thanks to his recent re-
education by James and Dr. Vong, his years of engineering experience, and
most of all, his musical mind, he was attuned to the composition of the
breakthrough Kathryn had initiated into the Greater World. Without the
loss of self he understood the gestalt that Mentors had, that he now had,
and he felt like an ancient fish stretching his newly evolved legs.
Finally Kathryn turned to Jamie, and for the briefest moment she
saw, not the young woman whom she had come to know as her best,
closest friend, but an old man, an ancient man, Methuselah incarnate. And
on that face of ages she saw a familiar face, buried in wrinkles, but
intimately familiar. She gasped, shaken. Quickly however that face was
gone and the Jamie she knew stood before her. After a moment, a year,
Kathryn reached out and said, sobbing a little, "I understand now.
Everything. I must go."
Jamie touched the hand of the fading image; "I understand." She
winked, "Write if you get work."
Then, with a slight pop, Kathryn was gone. And the project that
was a catalyst for the four of them became a catalyst for millions. A
thought wave, passing through the mentors like a density wave moving
through a galaxy, igniting stars. Around the world, the patchwork of
isolated Greater World projects became linked, and things changed.
The fire at Dr. Vong's lab never ignited...
Doltman's Hammer never launched...
And JMS 2032 vanished from the Real World.

- 179 -
PART IV

Chapter 45
"So that's it?" asked Billy of the others, somewhat tenuously.
James was still in shock; he sat staring at a monitor, not seeing or
hearing. Sareena breathed, "Isn't that enough?" She looked at her teacher,
sensed the tragedy he felt, and her heart went out to him even as her mind
raced.
"But I don't feel any different. I haven't got any super-powers or
anything."
Jamie laughed. "Did you think you would? Silly man!" But she
had a look of relief on her face, as if she had doubts that this would ever
happen. Then suddenly understanding spread across her face.
"You know, I’ve know all about the mechanics of Mobius Space
for a good while now, but it just occurred to me, almost a year after our
first meeting, that it’s all sort of an inverse Schroedinger’s Cat."
"How you mean?" asked Sareena, amazement starting to take hold
but not looking away from the mathematician.
Billy answered, “I see. Rather than the observer collapsing all
probabilities, evolved humans actually create the probabilities in the first
place!"
"Right! And as long as these probabilities are self-consistent so
that other Mentors can understand them, they become part of the Greater
World. "
"Well then, Miss Jamie, what the hell happened to Kathy?"
"She did it, we did it, we succeeded: our probabilities are self-
consistent. We created an intersection of Mobius Manifolds, and Kathryn
took it."
"Did she go to save the Moon? Will she be back, ever?" asked
Sareena, still looking at James.
Jamie walked over and put her arm on both of them. "No to the
first question. Like I've been saying all along, we were doing all this just
for a catalyst, to get a reaction going with others to allow them to develop
new technology for that problem. The physics to prevent the impact didn't
exist before we and others broke through to the Greater World. But now it
can. As for Kathryn, our new technology worked, permitting her to follow
another life-path now, one that suits her. When she will return, I can't say."
James shook slightly at this last word; Sareena put her hand on
his, not knowing what to say. Billy was not unsympathetic, but he needed
to know, so he asked quietly, "What do we do now?"

- 180 -
 Jamie turned and smiled her Cheshire Cat smile, a mixed grin of
satisfaction, empathy, and devilment. "Essentially, anything we want."
And behind her eyes you could see the teen-ager's wheels turning.
_______________________________________________

On October 23, 2032, the IGNN finally broke the story, and it
quickly spread to the various national, state or province, and local news
outlets. In Los Angeles an attractive anchorwoman of appropriately
indeterminate lineage reported, "More on that story about the city takeover
of the MUNI and BART systems in a minute. We've just received this
breaking news story. Scientists have succeeded in diverting asteroid JMS
2032A from its collision course with the Moon. For more on this important
story we go to Earthman David Navarrro at the Annealia Sargent Memorial
Space Research Center in the Owens Valley. David?"
"Thank you Kimberly. As we've been reporting for the last few
months, our satellite, formally known as Luna but which we call the Moon,
has been in danger of receiving a mortal blow from asteroid JMS 2032A.
Asteroids are large chucks of Solar System debris that orbit around the Sun
in vast numbers. We've been concerned for almost 40 years about an Earth
impact with one of these cosmic visitors, a potentially devastating
catastrophe. But a hit on the Moon hadn't been contemplated until the
discovery of JMS 2032A almost a year ago. The extent of the damage such
an impact would have on the Moon was unclear, but it could have
destroyed our satellite, with unknown effects on us. Certainly our tides
would be affected, and songwriters would have one less metaphor to use,
eh Kimberly?"
"Since that discovery and realization that it would hit our Moon
scientists have been searching for a way to nudge the asteroid onto a
different path. Nuclear weapons were considered, but barely a week before
these weapons were to be launched, scientists succeeded in using a Laser to
push the rock to a safe location."
"It's an amazing idea, but apparently light does have a pressure
associated with it. It's too small for us to feel, but spread out over a large
area it would produce enough force to push even a huge rock in space."
"Scientists here have invented the ZPEXRL, an X-Ray Laser
which uses something called Zero Point energy to power it. Until now the
only way to fire an X-Ray Laser was to use atomic weapons, which make
one huge burst of energy for the laser, subsequently destroyed in the
process."
"Zero point energy comes from, they tell me, quote, ‘the
Heisenberg uncertainty of known the value of Electromagnetic fields as
well as the rate of change of those fields simultaneously’, unquote. Folks, I
don't know what that means any more than you do, but it worked. The

- 181 -
ZPEXRL has been firing continuously for the last two months, and the
most recent calculation on the path of 2032A has been altered enough to
keep our Moon safe, this time. We can all rest easier tonight, knowing that
Moonlight will still shine in our window for years to come. Back to you
Kimberly."
"Thank you David. I guess we'll be having romantic evenings
under the Moon for a long time to come. In our other top story: automated
car lanes open on the 91 freeway..."
Around the Los Angeles newly evolved humans chuckled. The
salvation of the human race barely topped the salvation of commuters.
More to the point, the method of global salvation could not have possibly
worked before the bifurcation of the species. No radiation pressure could
have altered the trajectory of the asteroid so close to lunar impact. The
reaction force of the X-ray photon emission alone would have buried the
device deep in the ground. There was some truth to the Zero-Point energy
report though.
No matter. The disaster that would have been caused by
Congressman Bruce Doltman's military solution was averted, and the fact
that "mad scientists" turned out to be not so mad, had indeed saved the
planet, took all the wind out of his and his Republicratic sails. Oh, at first
there was an attempt to bury the story, which worked for several months
and lessened the embarrassment for those advocates of "The Hammer", but
eventually even the most distracted citizen thought "What ever happened
to...?" and the word got out. Then a show was made by Doltman to recant
and say that there had never been any real danger, but the hyper-passionate
speech he had made earlier in the year was way too fresh, a wooden stake
through the heart of resurgent statism that the Liberty Party could twist on
demand. At least for a few years; cracks in its dominance were showing.
True, the effects of dysgenesis would eventually bring back the
Nanny state, since the citizenry would grow less and less capable of
controlling themselves. True, after this brief flare-up of self-reliance, the
world would drift towards dystopia. But critical mass for the Mentors had
been achieved; no statists could ever hamper their activities. They would
make sure everything ran smoothly for their cousins, that they all had
everything they needed and nothing too dangerous for their politicians to
play with, something no mere government could do.
For now most people went back to ignoring all that "science
stuff", leaving the thinking to those few who enjoyed thinking. For the
EveryMan, the pursuit of happiness was enough. New knowledge and
technologies sprang up almost at the speed of thought, making life more
leisurely, more worry-free, and more secure than he could possibly
imagine. For now there really was someone to (secretly) watch over him, a
family of big brothers and sisters who could avert any catastrophe, cover

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any shortage, and solve any problem, save those that arose in the normal
course of human emotion. Lovers still quarreled, babies still cried, and
young girls still thrilled as the young boys fought over them. However,
famine slowly vanished as populations stabilized, the air and water became
cleaner, energy was plentiful, and war was no longer necessary or even
desired--it interfered with that pursuit too much.
Global Utopia? No, just the Real World, a nice place to bring your
kids up in.
As for those who now had access to the Greater World, at least
four were busy dismantling their equipment, making individual plans, in
wonder and in sadness. Up at Berkeley Jamie found the MIVI engineer
alone, finishing up his notes.
"Hey Jamie! Glad you're still around. I've got a question for you:
what was that vested interest your told us about at that first meeting?" Billy
asked. He was about to leave the lab at Berkeley, go back and rejoin that
concert he had started so long ago. Strange to think that this was he himself
who had taken over for him when "Nathan" had first opened that doorway
to the Greater World. Now he was going back--not that he had too--but he
hated loose ends as much as any engineer. He was worried about being out
of practice though. "Beyond saving the Earth, that is."
She laughed, "Good memory! Have you been agonizing over it all
these months? Well, I have some explaining to do I guess. You see, most
normal people see time as proceeding one foot after the other, an army of
seconds marching in time, so to speak. This is a good first approximation,
but upon closer study it's more like a dance, with leaps, twirls, and jette`s,
folding back on itself, twisting around. I came here on one of those twists
from after we had already accomplished this. You've talked to James about
multiple consistent realities in Mobius manifold junctions. It's similar."
"When I began to study the events surrounding the saving of the
Moon and our planet, I realized that the technology could not have solved
this problem at that, this time. But somehow the problem was solved. My
circumstance in the Greater World is, and will be, a fact, so as I came to
understand how we really survived my course of action was clear."
"Now you can't call it fate. Fate and destiny are the results of an
arithmetic sequence of events leading up to an inevitable conclusion. You
will learn the fallacy of linear time soon enough; then all I've said will
make sense. Think of it as, well, something that needed to get done to keep
my world consistent. In a weird and not very accurate way, I am my own
parent, not in a biological way, but my future existence depends on my
past existence."
Billy rolled his eyes. "Well, duh!"

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 "No, no. I see what you're thinking, and I wasn't clear." She
looked right into Billy's eyes. "Don't ever breathe a word of this! You
know about a woman's scorn, right?"
Billy nodded solemnly. It was probably the only thing he ever
feared.
"OK. My full name is Jamie Southard. James was named after his
uncle." She let the words hang; Billy's eyes grew wide.
"Yes, I see you understand," she said. "When I awoke to the
Greater World, I was reborn. My rebirth was dependent on the events that
transpired here. A few months ago I found that my presence here had
altered the topology of this manifold. However, because the 'history' as I
knew it to be didn't unfold as expected, as I studied had it, I had the
freedom to change it. What would have happened to me if I hadn’t, I can't
say. But I wanted this life, and more importantly humanity was in extreme
danger, so I chose this course of action. It was touch-and-go for a while,
and the outcome was by no means certain, but we succeeded. I hope you
are as pleased as I."
"Yeah" he said, mostly to himself. He sat there, taking his time
sorting things out, closing out his notes. He had been considering the
events of the past year as he was packing up, just how bizarre it had
seemed at first, and how quickly he had adapted to the new reality. True,
he didn't feel any different, and he couldn't think of any new "life path" to
follow as Kathryn did, but he was happy to go with the flow. The
revelation about Jamie did take him by surprise.
After a few minutes of contemplation while Jamie helped him
pack a few small items outside and onto his bike he asked, "So, are you
outa here, I mean, really outa here, like Kathryn?"
Jamie put her hand on Billy's shoulder and squeezed, "Yes, just
about. I had a little talk with our prodigy programmer, and I want to say
goodbye to James. He's totally bummed about Kathryn leaving like that.
Maybe you could look in on him from time to time?"
"Sure, he's just a big kid and always good for a grin. You gonna
tell him who you are?"
Jamie shook her head. "That's our secret. Remember the scorn
routine! I could make life very dicey for you with Leigh and Amanda."
Billy winced. "'But now it's time for me to go, the autumn moon lights my
way'."
He recognized the quote. "It was just a little over a year ago,
wasn't it? What a year!" They embraced for a long minute. As they pulled
apart Billy asked, "We'll meet again, won't we?"
Wet-eyed, Jamie said, "Oh yea. When, I can't say, but definitely."

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 Billy gunned the rotary, aimed the bike down the driveway and
onto Ashby Ave., and with a wave was gone before Jamie could see him
tear up.

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 Chapter 46
James was sitting in his hotel suite, suitcase packed but open on
the bed. He was slumped in a chair overlooking the bay, watching the
boats zip by. Crowded, he thought. Nice day to be on the water. No
worries, living for the weekend. By the erratic course many of the
watercraft traced, he judged that some of the captains and crew were
seriously self-medicated.
He said aloud, "Could it be any other way?"
"Do I detect a vein of bitterness?"
Only mildly startled, James turned to see Jamie, arms folded
under her breasts, almost hugging herself. She gazed at him for a moment,
then looked past out the window. "You could have knocked," he said
quietly.
"I did, several times."
"Oh."
"So I popped in--didn't want you to be alone. Also, I came to say
farewell."
"You're leaving too?"
She moved towards the window and continued to stare at the bay.
"Yes, I've been away too long," she sighed, leaving space for the obvious
question.
"So, you've got someone waiting for you?"
"Yes," she said simply, "although for her we were together only
yesterday."
He didn't even raise an eyebrow at this. "Must be nice."
Again, "Do I detect a vein of bitterness?"
James snorted, "A vein? Hell! You found the mother lode." He
rose to stand next to her. "Some things don't change, even in such
extraordinary times, huh?"
"Did you expect them to?"
"I don't know what I expected. Maybe that we'd, maybe that I, I'd
found somebody who'd stick by me. Maybe that this push into the much
vaunted Greater World would make the connection between and Kathryn
more cerebral as well as physical."
Jamie turned to face him. "In your own way, you're as unrealistic
as Billy, who thought he'd get some special powers. No special powers, no
immanent godhood and no special evolution for relationships. Men are still
men, and women are still women, even if we're on the way to something
more than homo sapiens."
"Evidently so."
Jamie pulled him to the sofa. "Look, regardless if a woman is
EveryWoman or something more, a large part of our anatomy is geared for

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childbearing. And we're reminded every month 'that's another cycle that
you didn't conceive'. Therefore, the urge to make a baby is central for most,
but not all, women." She paused. "That's one reason that orgasms are so
much more intense for us. Another carrot to follow, a reward for putting up
with bleeding, cramps, and all that. For you, a small spasm is all that you
get, because you don't have to deal with reproduction so intimately."
"But unlike you, we have a limited time for reproduction. Now, I
could have told Kathryn that this time limit isn't a problem for her, now
that we've broken through..."
"Why didn't you?" he almost shouted.
"Because," she said quietly, "she felt the urge now, and my telling
her this wouldn't have changed anything. She felt motherly now; it's not
something you can turn on and off, something that you can subvert,
something you can put off. She may be the planet's first MIVI pilot, but
that's secondary for her now."
"Well, I might have come around and given her that child."
Jamie shook her head. "No, you wouldn't, not soon enough for her
anyway. She could see that." She said sternly, "Let me clue you in, mister
brilliant mathematician, on a bit of anthropology/biology/psychology. A
woman needs to feel a measure of control in a relationship. We are
generally not the physically dominant partner, and most men rebel at overt
physical control anyway. So we need something else, another method.
Why are some working women happy to have a man who doesn't work? It
wrests a bit of control from the man."
James considered that. "I don't want control, I want cooperation."
"You're unusual, and that's a problem. Here's why. Most men have
a barely restrained aggressiveness, more willing to bull through something
physically that to think it out. From a survival-of-the-fittest point of view,
this is very attractive to women, because we see men as a source of
protection for themselves and our children. Even if some women have to
weather some abuse--which I don't approve of in the least--they're
reminded that they have a strong male present. Police and armies are
predominantly aggressive-masculine for this reason. But there's still the
control issue, like keeping big, mean dogs for protection."
"So the control is?"
"The carrot and the stick is sex. Supply an aggressive male with
whatever sex he wants for good behavior, and give him a cold bed when he
misbehaves. It's a fine game to play--withhold too much and he will look
for another supplier. Especially aggressive men will stray anyway,
regardless of the woman-at-home's temptations. But women are good at
applying the spurs appropriately."
James grunted, "Sounds very mercenary."

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 "Well, sorry, but for many women it's necessary; it's their only
bargaining chip. Most, not all, women, want that strong, dominant, even
dangerous man. You are a nice man, a loyal man, an extremely smart man,
but not very aggressive. I'm guessing that Kathryn sensed that you couldn't
be controlled in this way. Besides that, offspring weren't part of your life
plan, no matter how much you loved her. See?"
James exhaled loudly. "Yeah, I guess so. But we had good sex, if
I might say so myself," he muttered, somewhat embarrassed.
"For Kathryn and women like her, 'good sex' isn't enough. Rude
and wild sex, hot and steamy, even dangerous. She needs a man who will
practically bust through a door to get at her; then she'll feel confident that
she has some leverage. A man who is just sexually compliant is not
hooked. My impression is that you prefer to have a stimulating
conversation, discuss theories, advance speculations, then maybe have a
little sex. Again, we're not all like this, but the great majority are. And even
if we eventually decide against personal motherhood, the needs and the
instincts of motherhood are ever present. Therefore, like most people, male
and female, we act in their own self-interest."
"Very astute," he muttered bitterly, still resisting the reality. He
sat moping, not responding, forcing Jamie to grab his chin and turn his face
towards hers. "She's gone! Let it be," she said sternly.
This got his attention. "I must say, you don't seem particularly
sympathetic."
Jamie softened. "Dear boy, sometimes the truth is a bit hard, even
in the Greater World. Let's just say I've looked at life from both sides now.
But hard as it seems to believe right now, it's all for the best."
James retorted, meekly, "So, do you have any children?",
knowing her answer but wanting to defend himself somehow.
"No. I was married once, a long time ago, but we never felt the
need for any kids."
"But you're about Kathryn's age. Don't you feel the 'urge'?"
"My circumstances are, well, unique. So no, I have no such
proclivity."
James thought for a moment. "You know, when I think about our
little group, none of us is a parent. Of course not Sareena, but also not
Billy, nor you, nor me. Thinking about my old UVa colleagues, their
reproduction rate is very low, negative actually. It's not just me. If we are
all part of a new evolving race, how come we don't want children much?
Seems like there'd be some kind of imperative, you know? I mean, it looks
like we'd die out before we get very far."
Jamie assumed her professorial cant. "There is no evolutionary
advantage for a human to be able to understand Maxwell's equations. Or to
write serial music. Or debate relativism versus absolutism. All a human

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needs to be is a bit smarter than his prey. Just a bit. 'Get there fustest with
the mostest', and get out before something bigger comes along for a meal.
Anything else in the brain department is superfluous. Art, math, science,
philosophy, music--all these are tough to fit into survival skills for a homo
sapien."
"So...." James connected the dots. "So we're no longer homo
sapiens?"
"We're splitting off, but not--" she snapped her fingers "--
instantly. It's not spontaneous generation, like the old creation biologists
demanded. Our DNA sequencing is drifting away from human normal.
How fast this will occur I cannot say, since we will have it within our
power to influence the drift rate. But the bottom line is, we don't have as
many children because we don't need as many. Lifespans will increase to
many centuries, measured in linear time. Of course, in Mobius Space linear
time has little relevance."
Navell soaked this up while Jamie continued. "None of this
mitigates the fact that Kathryn wants, needs to be a Mom. And you ain't
'Daddy'. Get used to it!" Then, almost whispering, "Get over it. Get over
her."
The two sat there on the sofa for almost an hour more, hardly
saying anything else. Boats continued to zip on the bay; people in the hall
laughed and talked loudly as they strolled by. The mathematician digested
all that he had been told, and when he would shudder, holding back a sob,
Jamie consoled him. He ran the last few months over and over in his mind,
as he had been doing ever since Kathryn left. Why had he not seen what
Jamie had told him? What could he have done to keep her? According to
Jamie, nothing at all. After a while the wounds began to knit as he slowly
came to realize that there was no blame in this situation. Just as well blame
mass for gravity. There would be still be pain, but no guilt, at least for this-
-one more--failed relationship. However, he did begin to feel selfish about
keeping Jamie here. She had been a comfort, but if it was true that she had
been in a state of separation for over a year, it was wrong to hold her here
overlong.
"Yes, my boy, I need to go home. Things'll work out; just be
patient."
They stood up. "May I walk you to your car?"
"Not necessary. I didn't arrive by one, and I won't be needing one
now." She hugged James long and hard. A question, nagging him for
months and months, finally surfaced.
"Who are you, really?"
Jamie stood in front of him, slowing fading from view, until only
her smile remained.
______________________________________________

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 History recorded that mere months before the asteroid was to
destroy the Moon a group of scientists developed what was called a
"photonic pressure beam" using a super-laser that changed the potential
impactor's path just enough to miss hitting our satellite. This was a
perfectly acceptable explanation for the world of EveryMan; scientists will
take care of all the hard stuff. As long as there were 500 channels of
mindless entertainment on TV, as long as the new automated lanes on the
91 freeway keep traffic flowing so they could chat on the phone, as long as
there was a steady stream of new celebrities cueing up for their, formerly
fifteen, now five, minutes of fame, as long as their pursuit of happiness
isn't slowed by too much of that 'thinking' stuff, the family of man was
content.
Most people didn't realize that some of their siblings had just left
home.
Weeks went by, and time found James sitting, with Bugger
snoozing in his lap, on the front porch back home. Another dusk, another
Autumn. He could, with only a little effort, be sitting on any porch in any
place at any time. The possibilities, the opportunities that existence in the
Greater World offered still astounded, and honestly, frightened him a bit.
So many doors now open to him...
But he was comfortable here in the Real World on the Real Porch
with the Real Cat. One day, sooner that later, he would move into the new
realms available to him and the other Mentors. Not today though, not
today. He still had the very real fantasy of that woman who would walk up
the driveway and love him for his mind. It might happen, he thought
bitterly, reflecting on his own recent fiasco from which he was still
smarting. Yeah, right.
Suddenly Bugger started, leaped up into the air, and hid under his
rocker. An intense spot of light was forming, growing, flashing a broad
spectrum of colors in the middle of his driveway. Deja vu all over again,
but he had seen so much since the first time this had happened, James was
not any more impressed by this than by any door opening. Probably
Natalie AKA Jamie stopping by for a visit. This buoyed his mood, as he
missed her and the other team members and thought of them often. That
woman knows how to make an entrance, he thought. And as he looked up
he saw a tall, exotic, shapely woman, darkly complected, with long straight
dark hair. The same refugee from the Kama Sutra who had pulled him into
Alice’s looking glass over a year ago.
But it wasn't Natalie ne' Jamie who stepped out of the halo of
light. She was indeed a tall, well-formed Indian woman with long dark
hair, but that regal face, those piercing, intelligent, familiar eyes...
Holy crap! he realized, it's Sareena! It's Sareena grown up!

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 "Hello James," she cooed, almost chanted, in a rich, sultry,
powerful soto voce, obviously enjoying his reaction. She was a stunning
vision: perfect figure, huge bedroom eyes, wide smile, generous lips, lithe
and poised. And no more the teenager with just an adolescent crush; her
intentions were clear.

"I've solved our SETI problem."

THE END

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