Existence

  “Can you tell me when we’re due?”

  “Certainly, madam. There is a slowdown in progress due to heightened security. Hence, we may experience some delay crossing the Beltway. But there is no cause for alarm. And we remain ahead of schedule because of that tailwind across the Appalachian Mountains.”

  “Hm. Heightened security?”

  “For the Artifact Conference, madam.”

  Tor frowned. She hoped that Wesley wouldn’t have any trouble coming to meet her. Things might be tense enough between the two of them, without this added irritant. He tended to get all lathered and indignant over being beamed and probed by agents of the pencil pushers’ guild … the civil servants assigned to checking every conceivable box and possible failure mode.

  “For the Artifact Conference?” Tor’s thoughts zeroed in on something puzzling. “But that should already be taken into account. Security for the gathering shouldn’t affect our timetable.”

  “There is no cause for alarm,” the servitor repeated. “We just got word, two minutes ago. An order to reduce speed, that’s all.”

  Glancing outside, Tor could see the effects of slowing, in a gradual change of altitude. The Spirit’s tow cable slanted a little steeper, catching up to the ground-hugging locomotive tug.

  Altitude: 359 meters said a telltale in the corner of her left tru-vu lens.

  “Will you be wanting to change seats for our approach to the nation’s capital?” the servitor continued. “An announcement will be made when we come within sight of the Mall, though you may want to claim a prime viewing spot earlier. Children and first-time visitors get priority, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  A trickle of tourists had already begun streaming forward to the main observation lounge. Parents, dressed in bright-colored sarongs and Patagonian slacks, herded kids who sported the latest youth fashion—fake antennae and ersatz scales—imitating some of the alien personalities that had been discovered aboard the Livingstone Object … also called, for some reason, the Havana Artifact. A grand conference may have been called to deliberate whether it was a genuine case of First Contact, or just another hoax. But popular culture had already cast judgment.

  The Artifact was cool.

  “You say an alert came through two minutes ago?” Tor wondered. Nothing had flashed yet in her peripherals. But maybe the vigilance thresholds were set too high. With a rapid series of clicks on her tooth implants, she adjusted them downward.

  Immediately, crimson tones began creeping in from the edges of her specs, offering links that whiffed and throbbed unpleasantly.

  Uh-oh.

  “Not an alert, madam. No, no. Just preliminary, precautionary—”

  But Tor’s attention had already veered. Using both clicks and subvocal commands, she sent her specs swooping through the data overlays of virtuality, following threads of a security situation. Sensors tracked every twitch of the iris, following and often anticipating her choices, while colored data-cues jostled and flashed.

  “May I take away any rubbish or recycling?” asked the boxy tray on the wall. It dropped open a receptacle, like a hungry jaw, eager to be fed. The servitor waited in vain for a few moments. Then, noting that her focus lay far away, it silently folded and departed.

  “No cause for alarm,” Tor muttered sardonically as she probed and sifted the dataways. Someone should have banished that cliché from the repertoire of all ai devices. No human over the age of thirty would ever hear the phrase without wincing. Of all the lies that accompanied Awfulday, it had been the worst.

  Some of Tor’s favorite software agents were already reporting back from the Grid.

  Koppel—the summarizer—zoomed toward public, corporate, and government feeds, collating official pronouncements. Most of them were repeating the worrisome cliché.

  Gallup—her pollster program—sifted for opinion. People weren’t buying it, apparently. On a scale of one thousand, “no cause for alarm” had a credibility rating of eighteen, and dropping. Tor felt a wrench in the pit of her stomach.

  Bernstein leaped into the whistle-blower circuits, hunting down gossip and hearsay. As usual, there were far too many rumors for any person—or personal ai—to trawl. Only this time, the flood was overwhelming even the sophisticated filters at the Skeptic Society. MediaCorp seemed no better; her status as a member of the Journalistic Staff only won her a queue number from Research Division and a promise of response “in minutes.”

  Minutes?

  It was beginning to look like a deliberate disinformation flood, time-unleashed in order to drown out any genuine tattles. Gangsters, terrorists, and reffers had learned the hard way that careful plans can be upset by some softhearted henchman, wrenched by remorseful second thoughts about innocent bystanders. Many a scheme had been spoiled by some lowly underling, who posted an anonymous squeal at the last minute. To prevent this, masterminds and ringleaders now routinely unleashed cascades of ersatz confessions, just as soon as an operation was underway—a spamming of faux regret, artificially generated, ranging across the whole spectrum of plausible sabotage and man-made disasters.

  Staring at a flood of warnings, Tor knew that one or more of the rumors had to be true. But which?

  Washington area Beltway defenses have already been breached by machoist suiciders infected with pulmonella plague, heading for the Capitol …

  A coalition of humanist cults have decided to put an end to all this nonsense about a so-called “alien Artifact” from interstellar space.…

  The U.S. president, seeking to reclaim traditional authority, is about to nationalize the D.C.-area civil militia on a pretext …

  Exceptional numbers of toy airplanes were purchased in the Carolinas, this month, suggesting that a swarm attack may be in the making, just like the O’Hare Incident.…

  A method has been found to convert zeppelins into flying bombs.…

  Among the international dignitaries, who were invited to Washington to view the Livingstone Object, are a few who plan to …

  There are times when human-neuronal paranoia can react faster than mere digital simulacra. Tor’s old-fashioned cortex snapped to attention a full five seconds before her ais, Bernstein and Columbo, made the same connection.

  Zeppelins … flying bombs …

  It sounded unlikely … probably distraction-spam.

  But I happen to be on a zeppelin.

  That wasn’t just a realization. The words formed a message. With subvocal grunts and tooth-click punctuations, Tor broadcast it far and wide. Not just to her favorite correlation and stringer groups, but to several hundred Citizen Action Networks. Her terse missive zoomed across the Net indiscriminately, calling to every CAN that had expressed interest in the zep rumor.

  “This is Tor Povlov, investigative reporter for MediaCorp—credibility rating 752—aboard the passenger zep Spirit of Chula Vista. We are approaching the D.C. Beltway defense zone. That may put me at a right place-time to examine one of the reffer rumors.

  “I request a smart-mob coalescence. Feedme!”

  * * *

  Disinformation, a curse with ancient roots, had been updated with ultramodern ways of lying. Machoists and other bastards might plant sleeper-ais in a million virtual locales, programmed to pop out at a preset time and spam every network with autogenerated “plausibles” … randomly generated combinations of word and tone that were drawn from recent news, each variant sure to rouse the paranoiac fears of someone.

  Mutate this ten million times (easy enough to do in virtual space) and you’ll find a nerve to tweak in anyone.

  Citizens could fight back, combating lies with light. Sophisticated programs compared eyewitness accounts from many sources, weighted by credibility, offering average folk tools to reforge Consensus Reality, while discarding the dross. Only that took time. And during an emergency, time was the scarcest commodity of all.

  Public avowal worked more quickly. Calling attention to your own person. Saying: “Look, I’m right here, real, cr
edible, and accountable—I am not ai—so take me seriously.”

  Of course that required guts, especially since Awfulday. In the face of danger, ancient human instinct cried out: Duck and cover. Don’t draw attention to yourself.

  Tor considered that natural impulse for maybe two seconds, then blared on all levels. Dropping privacy cryption, she confirmed her ticketed billet and physical presence aboard the Spirit of Chula Vista, with realtime biometrics and a dozen in-cabin camera views.

  “I’m here,” she murmured, breathlessly, toward any fellow citizen whose correlation-attention ais would listen.

  “Rally and feedme. Tell me what to do.”

  Calling up a smart-mob was tricky. People might already be too scattered and distracted by the rumor storm. The number to respond might not reach critical mass—in which case all you’d get is a smattering of critics, kibitzers, and loudmouths, doing more harm than good. A below-zero-sum rabble—or bloggle—its collective IQ dropping, rather than climbing, with every new volunteer to join. Above all, you needed to attract a core group—the seed cell—of online know-it-alls, constructive cranks, and correlation junkies, armed with the latest coalescence software, who were smart and savvy enough to serve as prefrontals … coordinating a smart mob without dominating. Providing focus without quashing the creativity of a group mind.

  “We recognize you, Tor Povlov,” intoned a low voice, conducting through her inner-ear receiver. Direct sonic induction made it safe from most eavesdropping, even if someone had a parabolic dish aimed right at her.

  “We’ve lit a wik. Can you help us check out one of these rumors? One that might possibly be a whistle-blow?”

  The conjoined mob voice sounded strong, authoritative. Tor’s personal interface found good credibility scores as it coalesced. An index-marker in her left peripheral showed 230 members and climbing—generally sufficient to wash out individual ego.

  “First tell me,” she answered, subvocalizing. Sensors in her shirt collar picked up tiny flexings in her throat, tongue, and larynx, without any need to make actual sound. “Tell me, has anyone sniffed something unusual about the Spirit? I don’t see or hear anything strange. But some of you out there may be in a better position to snoop company status reports or shipboard operational parameters.”

  There was a pause. Followed by an apologetic tone.

  “Nothing seems abnormal at the public level. Company web-traffic has gone up sixfold in the last ten minutes … but the same is true all over, from government agencies to networks of amateur scientists.

  “As for the zeppelin you happen to be aboard, we’re naturally interested because of its present course, scheduled shortly to moor in Washington, about the same time that a new wave of high-level delegates are arriving for the Artifact Conference.”

  Tor nodded grimly, a nuance that her interface conveyed to the group mind.

  “And those operational readouts?”

  “We can try for access by applying for a Freedom of Information writ. That will take some minutes, though. So we may have to supplement the FOIA with a little hacking and bribery. The usual. We’ll also try for some ground views of the zep.

  “Leave all that to us.

  “Meanwhile, there’s a little on-site checking you can do.

  “Be our hands and eyes, will you, Tor?”

  She was already on her feet.

  “Tell me where to go…”

  “Head aft, past the unisex toilet.”

  “… but let’s have a consensus agreement, okay?” she added while moving. “I get an exclusive on any interviews that follow. In case this turns out to be more than…”

  “There is a security hatch, next to the crew closet,” the voice interrupted. “Adjust your specs for full mob access please.”

  “Done,” she said, feeling a little sheepish over the request for a group exclusive. But after all, she was supposed to be a pro. MediaCorp might be tuning in soon, examining transcripts. They would expect a professional’s attention to the niceties.

  “That’s better. Now zoom close on the control pad. We’ve been joined by an off-duty zep mechanic who worked on this ship last week.”

  “Look, maybe I can just call a crew member. Invoke FOIA and open it legally—”

  “No time. We’ve filed for immunity as an ad hoc citizen posse. Under PA crisis rules.”

  PA … for Post-Awfulday.

  “Oh sure. With me standing here to take the physical rap if it’s refused.…”

  “Your choice, Tor. If you’re game for it, press the keypad buttons in this order.”

  A virtual image of the keypad appeared in front of Tor, overlaying the real one.

  “No cause for alarm,” she muttered.

  “What was that?”

  “Never mind.”

  Feeling somewhat detached, as if under remote control, her hand reached out to tap the proposed sequence.

  Nothing happened.

  “No good. They must’ve rotated the progression since our zepspert worked on that ship.”

  The wikivoice mutated, sounding just a tad less cool. More individualized. A telltale indicator in her tru-vu showed that some high-credibility member of the mob was stepping up with an assertive suggestion.

  “But you can tell it isn’t randomized. I bet it’s still a company-standard maintenance code. Here, try this instead.”

  Coalescence levels seemed to waver only a little, so the mob trusted this component member. Tor went along, punching the pad again with the new pattern.

  “Any luck getting that FOIA writ?” she asked, meanwhile. “You said it would take just a few minutes. Maybe we’d better wait…”

  Procrastination met its rebuttal with a simple a click, as the access panel slid aside, revealing a slim, tubelike ladder.

  Up.

  No hesitation in the mob voice. Five hundred and twelve of her fellow citizens wanted her to do this. Five hundred and sixteen.…

  Tor swallowed. Then complied.

  * * *

  The ladderway exposed a truth that was hidden from most passengers, cruising in cushioned comfort within the neatly paneled main compartment. Physics—especially gravity—had not changed appreciably in the century that separated the first great zeppelin era from this one. Designers still had to strive for lightness, everywhere they could.

  Stepping from spindly rungs onto the cargo deck, Tor found herself amid a maze of spiderlike webbery, instead of walls and partitions. Her feet made gingerly impressions in foamy mesh that seemed to be mostly air. Stacks of luggage—all strictly weighed back in Nashville—formed bundles that resembled monstrous eggs, bound together by air-gel foam. Hardly any metal could be seen. Not even aluminum or titanium struts.

  “Shall I look at the bags?” she asked while reaching into her purse. “I have an omnisniffer.”

  “What model?” inquired the voice in her ear, before it changed tone by abrupt consensus. More authoritatively, it said—“Never mind. The bags were all scanned before loading. We doubt anything could be smuggled aboard. Anyway, a crew member may be checking those soon, as the alert level rises.

  “But something else has come up. A rumor-tattle points to possible danger higher up. We’re betting on that one.”

  “Higher?” She frowned. “There’s nothing up there except…”

  Tor’s voice trailed off as a schematic played within her tru-vus, pointing aft to another ladder, this one made of ropey fibers.

  Arrows shimmered in VR yellow, for emphasis.

  “We finally succeeded in getting a partial feed from the Spirit’s operational parameters. And yes, there’s something odd going on.

  “They are using onboard water to make lift gas, at an unusual rate.”

  “Is that dangerous?”

  “It shouldn’t be.

  “But we may be able to find out more, if you hurry.”

  She sighed, stepping warily across the spongy surface. Tor hadn’t yet spotted a crew member. They were probably also busy chasing rumors,
different ones, chosen by the company’s prioritization subroutines. Anyway, a modern towed-zep was mostly automatic, requiring no pilot, engineer, or navigator. A century ago, the Hindenburg carried forty officers, stewards, and burly riggers, just to keep the ornate apparatus running and deliver the same number of paying customers from Europe to the U.S.

  At twice the length, Spirit carried five times as many people, served by only a dozen human attendants.

  Below her feet, passengers would be jostling for a better view of the Langley Crater, or maybe Arlington Cemetery, while peering ahead for the enduring spire of the rebuilt Washington Monument, with its tip of lunar stone. Or did some of those people already sniff an alert coming on, through their own liaison networks? Were families starting to cluster near the emergency chutes? Tor wondered if she should be doing the same.

  This new ladder was something else. It felt almost alive and responded to her footstep by contracting … carrying her upward in a smooth-but-sudden jerk. Smart elastics, she realized. Fine for professionals. But most people never took a liking to ladders that twitch. The good news: It would take just a few actual footsteps at this rate, concentrating to slip her soles carefully onto one rung after the next, and worrying about what would happen when she reached the unpleasant-looking “hatch” that lay just overhead.

  Meanwhile, the voice in her ear took on a strange, lilting quality. The next contribution must have come from an individual member. Someone generally appreciated.

  “Come with me, higher than high,

  Dropping burdensome things.

  Lighter than clouds, we can fly,

  Thoughts spread wider than wings.

  Be like the whale, behemoth,

  Enormous, yet weightless beings,

  Soundlessly floating, the sky

  Beckons a mammal that sings.”

  Tor liked the offering. You almost wanted to earn it, by coming up with a tune …

  … only the “hatch” was now just ahead, or above, almost pressing against her face. A throbbing iris of polyorganic membranes, much like the quasiliving external skin of the Spirit. Coming this close, inhaling the exudate aromas, made Tor feel queasy.