The Beam: Season Three (10 page)

“You object to NPS coming up here,” Leo said.
 

“I just keep thinking we’re done with them.”
 

“They’re not butting in. They’re just trying to help.”
 

To Gregory’s credit, he managed not to laugh. But Leo read his skepticism just the same.
 

“If a bunch of Gaia start showing up in DZ to get themselves stripped and covered, people might start asking questions,” Leo explained.
 

“Yeah, I guess.”
 

Gregory seemed to be waiting for dismissal. He turned when Leo didn’t dismiss him. Then Leo repeated his name, causing him to turn again. But this time, Leo kept his gaze outward, seeing the turn only in the corner of his eye. He only wanted to see the valley. Maybe that would help him focus on why they were here and help him believe that this was right. That
all
of it was right, no matter how conflicted it made Leo feel.

“Yeah, Leonidas?”
 

“Do you like it here?”
 

“Sure.”
 

“Do you miss the old life?”
 

Gregory didn’t say anything. Leo assumed he’d shrugged out of sight.
 

“I don’t mean just our purpose as Gaia. Gaia’s time is past.
This here — ”
he turned and patted the air, indicating the new mountain village, “ — is right for us now. The days of blade and fist are over. The deal we made with NPS — no matter how I feel about it — will keep that mission going forward. Our best purpose now is to lead by example. Up here. Doing what’s hard, to show that it’s possible.”
 

“Sure, boss.”
 

“I meant, do you miss the city?”
 

By which Leo really meant:
Do you miss the technology? Do you miss Crossbrace?
But even if the former members of Gaia’s Hammer (now Organa, weak as that sounded) would admit to missing the network they’d embraced as a means to battle against it, Leo wouldn’t need an admission to get his answer. He knew they missed it because they couldn’t
not
miss it. It wasn’t about willpower. It was biology, and nobody was immune without help.

“Maybe some. But this is what’s best.”
 

Leo considered Gregory for a moment before giving the big man a nod to dismiss him. It was strange to think that he pitied someone so mighty, but he did. The others all trusted Leo so blindly.
Once their leader, always their leader.
Where Leonidas led, Gaia would follow.
 

The thought hurt Leo’s heart, especially considering what the visitor waiting in the meeting hall had brought with him. And to think: Leo had once thought that particular piece of organic, blood-pumping humanity within him was strong.

Leo began walking the trail back to the heart of the village, moving slowly to make sure he didn’t catch up with Gregory. The man wouldn’t be taking his time; they’d all caused enough damage to the NAU infrastructure over the past years for religion to feel like a hypocritical luxury. In another situation, Leo supposed the soldiers would think him weak, but they couldn’t; they respected him too much. So they avoided the issue.
 

Leonidas had found God. Good for him.
 

They would settle in time. People had a remarkable capacity to forget, and they were in this mountain community for the long haul exactly the same as they’d been warrior vigilantes for the long haul. All for one, and one for all — lives pledged forever and all that. Despite the violence, they’d joined the Gaia cause as idealists, and this was another kind of idealism. They believed in nature, the Earth’s spirit, and leaving a minimal footprint behind after they died. They had everything needed to be hippies except the aesthetic. In five years, with the help of fabricating nanosurgeons, they’d have that, too.
 

And Leo? He wasn’t done with all of this. He wouldn’t go so quietly. He’d covered every one of his visible enhancements and had his nanos flashed, so he’d start aging soon — and would look the part like the others. He could grow his hair long. Maybe he could get a pair of those little glasses, just for effect. Wear tie-dye shirts. Colorful headbands.
 

And then, duly disguised, he could get back his presence in the city. Once this first troubling period had passed, NPS would leave them alone. Leo could return to DZ to regain a foothold and keep his all-too-organic ear to the ground. Get a quiet job for his days then come up here on the weekends. Maybe he could be a teacher. Help influence the minds of new potential rebels from the start, before the world twisted them into what most of humanity had become.
 

Walking the ridge trail, the air was still and pleasant. Leo tried to distance himself from his twitching urges and see the vista for its obvious beauty. The silence inside him was strange, but he was getting used to it. Over the past few months, he’d found that whenever he was alone, he was
literally alone
. No voices pinged into his head from the collective or the social forums. He had to grab a handheld or find a console to check his mail. He didn’t get a news feed. There were no noises telling Leo’s internal connection points what he should be paying attention to.
 

These days, Leo’s own mind was in charge of deciding where to look. These days, the only voices whispering in Leo’s cortex were his own: one of reason, one of worry, one of conscience.
 

He couldn’t use any of his rehearsed triggers to call up his dashboards. If he wanted to know if his feet were dirty, he had to look down or take off his sandals. If he got a bug in his eye, he had to sit and blink until it dislodged. When he wanted to wake himself up fully, he needed a brief stroll, maybe coffee. He couldn’t rise with Fauxdrenaline or fall asleep with Fauxlatonin. These days, too much stimulation at night would keep him awake — whereas in the past he’d never had the guts to turn that stimulation off.
 

In the beginning, they’d embraced technology so they could fight it. Implants made them strong and sharp and fast and observant. They’d installed plugs so organization nanohackers could enter and work directly on their target processors — until the AI got too smart and found workarounds. They’d installed CNS networks so they could collaborate and coordinate Gaia’s movements at a distance.
 

But in the end, they’d become just as used to all that technology as the people they were supposedly trying to oppose. They joined the system they claimed they were trying to unseat. They came to enjoy the ability to connect at all times and reveled in the constant entertainment. They’d been spartan before, but once Gaia
teched up
in the name of fighting the power, they came to appreciate the side effects: the way rooms responded to their wishes without being asked, instant access to videos everywhere, the way the hive reminded everyone of their grandmother’s birthday.
 

In theory, surrendering those perks should have been simple. Supposedly, they only had the add-ons because the tech aided their ability to do their anarchical jobs. Coming up here, obeying the NPS agreement, they were supposed to sever those connections — and, from their counterculture standpoint, it was supposed to be good riddance to bad rubbish. They should have been eager to do it.
 

But it had been a long, hard fight. And Leo, for one, knew that his mind had changed during the years it had been working as a single point in a network rather than as an individual.

He arrived at the large meeting hall to find it almost empty, just one man sitting in the middle. The visitor was of moderate height, fat, and sweaty. He was wearing a suit that made him stick out like a sore thumb, dark enough to pass for the black of a holy man’s garb.
 

“Where is it?” Leo asked.
 

The big man turned. He had curly shoulder-length hair that was pulled into a knot to keep it off his neck. His face was barely shaven, and of the hair strewn across it, the most prominent sections had become like gigantic, jowly sideburns.
 

“Is that how you greet me?” A small smile grew on the man’s features.
 

“I’d rather not draw this out.”
 

“Fine. It’s in my pack.”
 

The visitor pointed at a backpack on one of the long benches…which, Leo now realized, did indeed resemble church pews. That hadn’t been the intention. They could have printed straightforward chairs in a dozen materials up here and wouldn’t even have needed a proper canvas to do it. Before cutting the cord, Leo had a satellite receiver that let him siphon a signal out of the sky from almost anywhere. They could have plugged the printer into Leo then downloaded plans from Crossbrace and reeled off a few hundred comfortable seats in little time. But no, making the seats by hand felt more honest. Making fewer units by hand, then, was easier. And so here they were, in a church that had never seen religion, and where true spirituality — during the next few years of cleansing, anyway — felt to Leo like hypocrisy.
 

“But Leo,” the fat man said, “I wish you wouldn’t look at me that way. Aren’t we friends?”

“Not really.”

“See, now, that hurts my feelings. I’m bringing you salvation, not poison.”
 

“It’s both at once, Hector.”
 

“It’s medicine.”

Leo sighed and rolled his eyes. He went to the pack, picked it up, and brought it to the man. He set it on a bench (pew) beside him.
 

“Go ahead,” Hector said.
 

Leo unzipped the pack. Inside were many small silvery bags that yielded slightly to the touch. Vacuum packed. Apparently, the stuff was manufactured on the moon. Maybe the vacuum packs were in the same spirit as the freeze-dried ice cream he used to sometimes get as a kid, fascinated by the idea that it’s what the astronauts ate. Or maybe it was because Lunis was sensitive when left in open air. He’d been breaking only one open at a time before sifting it into the holding tank for the community’s drinking water, then keeping the rest sealed for later.
 

He had no idea if he was dosing his people by the book. Hector had offered instructions, but he’d also suggested they eat the stuff. It was harder to dose that way when people didn’t know they were on the drug. Leo’s barometer was softer. If the people in the village were too hyperactive, always pulling Doodads and other handhelds from their pockets to check their screens despite the terrible signal, then Leo simply added more Lunis. Once the village seemed reasonably content with their disconnected lifestyle and stopped clawing at its collective eyes, he figured he’d added enough.
 

“How much do I owe you?”
 

“I’ve already debited your account,” Hector said, waving a sweaty hand dismissively.
 

Leo’s eyes narrowed.
 

“You do realize I’m not a street hustler, right, Leo?”
 

“Just because you have a badge doesn’t give you the right to access our accounts without authorization.”
 

Hector patted his pocket, presumably indicating the presence of his NPS badge.
“This
is my authorization. But don’t get comfortable with our arrangement, okay? We’ll supply you for another month, if you want to keep handling things this way. But after that you’ll need to find yourself a dealer. Officially, I’m not even here.”
 

Leo considered making a joke about Hector’s girth, suggesting just how
here
he was. But that was anger talking. Or, more likely, guilt.

“The three agents you know? We’re it, Leonidas. In the system, everything we did with Hammer was slotted under unspecified civil investigation. You’ve got until July 15. After that, the three of us plan to forget everything that’s happened here. You run into me on the street, I don’t know who you are.”
 

“Literally, or…?”
 

“Figuratively. But we’re trained enough for it not to matter. Per our agreement, all Gaia records will be expunged and erased. This never hit Crossbrace. It was always contained, cables cut. AI will do the erasure, getting all the little loose ends. Come mid-July, Gaia’s Hammer will only exist in the minds of cops who dealt with your messes. But good luck if they ever try to prove it. Officially, half of the shit you did was due to a gas leak.”
 

“The stadium raid?” Leo asked. “The string of factories upstate?”
 

“It was a big gas leak.”
 

Leo pulled the small silver bags from the pack, re-zipped it, and handed it to Hector. Hector took it and set it on the floor: an athletic backpack soon to be shouldered by an unathletic-looking man in a suit.
 

“You’ll need to help me find a dealer.”

Hector shook his head. “I’m not even here.”
 

“Just a hint. Just tell me where to look.”
 

“Come on, Leonidas. You’re good at digging up shit. Get your hands dirty a bit more before settling in and pretending to be an innocent old man.”
 

Leo met Hector’s brown eyes. Behind the man’s duty, Leo saw resentment. Gaia was getting off easy for all the damage and death it had caused, and everyone involved knew it.