Sing Paramecia Sing.

A Novel in Thirty Days for NaNoWriMo

by James Bambury

First:

Binary beats Unity beats Parallel

Chapter 1(0)-1667

"Go ahead."

"Yes it is, as far as I can tell."

"I appreciate your patience, what do you have to tell me?"

"You know I’m an amateur stargazer myself, what kind of rig are you using to look at Mars?"

"Hey, I’m still using the first mercury dish I ever bought, they’re wonderful things. I’m sorry, so you were looking at Mars?"

"Yes, so you’ve had an encounter with the sasquatch as well. I’m assuming you’ve lived to tell about it."

"I follow you. Other callers have said many things about the sasquatch’s abilities to read people’s intentions."

"So what did the sasquatch say to you? What did he want?"

"Now that’s just incredible, I haven’t heard that before. You’re telling me that these sasquatch have mastered both time travel, and string theory?"

"I’m just amazed caller. So this sasquatch, he explained all this to you out in the park? Did he show you any sort of time machine there?"

"Yes."

"So what did the sasquatch say about that?"

"I get it. I get it now, and the sasquatch found it absurd that humans will eventually build the face at Cydonia, but that they’re denying it even exists right now. I love it. Well, thank you very much for the call tonight, and please get in touch again when you’ve spoken to the sasquatch again."

"Thank you very much Frank, I’ll be in touch."

"And with that I can see that we’re at the bottom of the hour and that it’s time once again for a break. Stay wired in and we’ll be back with more of your calls."

The buffer music faded in, some non-descript electronic rhythms from 20 years back or so. Frank removed his headphones and took a long drag to finish his cigarette before starting another. On the other side of the glass in the studio, Miguel turned to face Nick.

"He’s sure upset about loosing the guest for tonight. He only chain smokes when he’s mad," said Miguel. Nick looked up from his console.

"That call was great."

"Of course it was, but this is the second time in the last two weeks that we’re going into open lines for the whole show. We need guests."

"And the guests need us. Where else are they supposed to peddle books about channelling planetary energy to contact dead relatives and heal cancer in one pan dimensional outing?" Nick questioned. Maybe Frank’s getting as sick of the phone calls as I am, he thought for a moment. But Frank had a way of taking and listening to the calls night after night. A passive accepting manner which told him to relax and gently inquire where the skeptical mind screamed for intellectual justice to be served.

"Everything cool in there Frank? You’ve still got five." Miguel spoke into a microphone across the glass. Frank flashed him a thumbs up while taking another puff of his ciggarette. Miguel lifted his finger off the mic and turned to Nick, "So who do we have when we come back?"

"Uh, there’s the guy with the virus alert on the east coast line and the guy who travels to other dimensions with vibrating gongs on the west line." Nick said as he squinted at his monitor.

"Didn’t the virus guy call last night, or sometime before?"

"Yes and no, he used to call up from time to time about finding remains of the actual Tower of Babel, but it seems like he’s on a new trip now. He has called last week about the virus thing, but we’ve never got around to it," said Nick.

"Well, let’s make his night then," said Miguel, turning away from Nick to twiddle various knobs on the console in front of him. This used to be more fun when the callers weren’t like co-workers, thought Nick. He started to doodle on a post-it note placed earlier on his monitor. He drew a diagram over top the reminder of a meeting after the show, and started fiercely drawing more detailed symbols within the small sheet of paper. Seven in all, he grouped two or three at a time in little circles on the page. He stared at the sheet, pondering until Miguel called out.

"Back on air in ten everybody, heads up. Okay, and in five...four...three..." He faded out the buffer music as Frank gave the call out for the show and set up the next segment of open lines.

"Hello caller, you’re on the air."

"The pleasure is mine, please go ahead."

Nick sighed, after several occasions of servers being decommissioned by multiple copies of manifestos and supposed government documents and other philosophical texts being sent to the show, the email filter-daemons were programmed to delete anything larger than a few thousand words.

"I don’t think I’ve got around to it, nothing personal, I just don’t have a lot of time for email most days."

"I remember the last wave, the one that caused all those tics in people, are you saying this one is even worse?"

"Ah yes, that was some Superbowl Half-Time show. But please, tell me more about this new virus."

"I have to ask you caller. As a service to my listeners, what can they do about this? What can they do to protect themselves?

"Well that certainly is some good news."

"But you’ve got to know, the US government isn’t behind this one, not like Crackerjack. This is freaking them out. They relased the Jack when they had the cure in their hands, so that they could send a message to the rest of the world that they were on top of any kind of bio-data conflict that might arise. They could dish it out and they could take care of it."

"A chillingly effective display if you ask me."

"It certainly was. There have just been a few cases of this new virus, they’re calling it ‘Harlequin’ right now, and they have no idea where it’s from. It could be the Australians, it could be that cult in Wilke’s Land for all I know."

"It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the commune in Wilke’s Land, do you really think they could have anything to do with this?"

"I don’t know yet Frank, I’ve got a lot more research to do. But I promise, I’ll let you know as soon as I find out anything."

"Thank you for the call, and I appreciate all your endeavours. Now we’ve got a gentleman on the other line who says he travels through other dimensions, I hope he hasn’t gone anywhere while he’s been holding the line. Are you there caller?"

"So I’m interested, you travel through dimensions with the aid of vibrations? Can anyone do this?"

"Oh, and I hope you come and join us when you’re finished that book."

"Certainly Frank, I’d love to..."
Nick’s watch said it was 2:47am. Four hours, he thought exasperated, four more hours of this to go. He looked back down on to the scribbled post-it.

"Soon," he whispered.

Nick remained mostly silent through the staff meeting. Luckily, most of the issues remained between Miguel and Frank regarding the dependability of guests. Although Frank was usually quite irritable during any breakfast meeting. Having just spent five plus hours talking was a conversational drain. No matter how professional he tried to be, there was a certain amount of bitterness and resentment in him from listening complacently to such myriad abduction stories, conspiracy theories, and reports of supernatural phenomena so intently for so long.

Getting on the subway to go home made him feel like a salmon, swimming against a swarm of commuters rushing against him, grabbing their morning coffees and papers and filling up the core of the city he was just departing. Nick wondered for a moment if the lack of sleep was getting to him more than working the show. He usually slept in two shifts after getting home in the morning. The first was the crash following getting home and puttering about, it would last 3-4 hours into the afternoon, he’d then find himself awake until 8 or 9pm, when the second session of more REM based sleep would occur. This more restful period would last 2-3 hours before the clock radio would awake him to return to work.

Over his past three years working for the show, he’d appreciated working the night shift in so far as how it reduced the city from a chaotic metropolis to the social scale of a small town or village. The same people, coffee shop workers, drivers, security persons, occupied their same spaces every evening. When something had changed in the night village, it was far more obvious and apparent against the flux of people the city housed during the day.

Still, one never fully adjusted to working third shift. Miguel liked to say that it was going up against countless millennia of evolutionary habit.

"You can’t make a species nocturnal overnight you know," was his perennial quip whenever the subject of night shifts came up.

Nick arrived at his apartment with his cap and sunglasses over his eyes.

"The less you see the sun, the easier you can sleep you get back home," Miguel said. "You catch enough rays though, and you’ll be through the morning talk shows and the half the noon hour news before you can even think about sleeping."

He turned the lights on inside, the curtains perpetually drawn. Retrieving some cold pasta from the fridge, he sat at his terminal and checked for messages. Then after fishing out and staring at the crumpled post it from his pocket, he started the program.

Chapter 2(2568)

Paladin found himself in a gray hallway. The door he’d just come through would not open again, and he resigned himself to that he would have to go ahead. Ahead however, was darkness, the only light being a pair of fluorescent lights embedded in the halls just past the door.

I don’t like the look of this, Paladin thought. I need Fiver. He fingered through a small set of cards, selecting one marked with a series of parallel lines.

"Fiver," he said aloud. Within a second, a small rabbit materialized on the ground in front of him, as the card in his hand dissipated. Its eyes blinked once or twice, then its nose twitched before speaking.

"Why, hello Paladin-rah, what can I...what can I do for you?" The rabbit was a regular brown coloured field rabbit, the only distinguishing marking was a small circle of white fur on the top of its head.

"I took a wrong turn Fiver, I was a bit stupid. In that last passage there were three doors, they all looked alike, and I thought I could just search one after the other, I didn’t think one would lock me out like this."

"Oh, I see. Now that’s not good," said Fiver.

"Listen Fiver," said Paladin. "Minotaur is in here some where, right now. He’s looking for me. If I don’t have a way out, I’ll have no choice but to challenge him, and I don’t know if I’m ready for that."

Fiver scratched the ground a bit and wiggled his nose some more.

"Well...I’m certainly scared Paladin-rah, but I wouldn’t be so scared if I were you, not right now. But...but there is death here, and there will be more."

"Would you mind running down the hall for a ways, and then come back to tell me what you see."

"Oh, it’s so very dark, there could be elil."

"Please Fiver. For me." Already Paladin found himself wondering again if it was worth the investment to upgrade to a Blackberry or Hazel holo.

"Oh, alright then." Fiver scampered ahead into the darkness.

Keeping Fiver active meant that one of his arcanna would remain engaged. He’d need all his arcanna available if he were to run into Minotaur, so the scouting couldn’t last long. That was the problem with the Fiver holo, it was fine for sounding off when you were about to get into trouble, but it put one at a disadvantage should trouble arrive. While a Parallel or Void chip was engaged in powering Fiver (or any other holo for that matter), an opponent could easily play against such a piece.

I hate labyrinths, thought Paladin. He waited a moment, then he heard some faint scratching noises from the darkness in front of him, and listened as they grew louder. Fiver scurried back into the fluorescent glow.

"Everything looks pretty safe up ahead. The hallway opens up into this room, and there’s lots more doors there..."

"Alright then, it looks like I can move on for now. Thank you very much Fiver, you’re the finest of my Owsla and I’d give you a whole head of lettuce if I had one."

"I know you mean it NX-rah..." Fiver stopped suddenly, and started to tremble. "I should have know better, I should have been able to tell you. Oh, I’m sorry N-"

"Out!" shouted Paladin, he felt the Parallel chip materialize again as Fiver winked out of existence. Paladin stared ahead down the hall. Something followed Fiver back. He stood tense. Then suddenly, from behind him, he heard the door smash into pieces. A trap! I can’t even see what he’s going to play, he thought as he felt Minotaur smash into his back. He held a chip tightly in his fist as he tumbled forward. Void.

Minotaur skidded to a halt and the chip evapourated from his hand. Paladin, now on his stomach, lifted and turned his head to face his opponent. Minotaur was metal, and bore an over-sized humanoid torso atop bull-like body. Two giant exhaust pipes that ran up the shoulders of the beast gave the impression of two horns. On Minotaur’s chest, an emblem of parallel lines faded away. If you didn’t get me there, you don’t have a chance now. He remembered the crumpled sheet of paper.

As Paladin got to his feet, Minotaur coiled his body and let loose a blast of smog from his pipes as he charged forward. Paladin quickly looked at the remaining glyphs on the beast’s chest and grit his teeth. Binary. He threw the chip at the advancing beast, whose front legs collapsed as the chip embedded itself in his chest. The hindquarters followed, and Paladin began to approach as little panicked puffs of smoke still wheezed out of Minotaur.

"Didn’t think rabbit user like me was packing Binary did you?"

"I must admit," started Minotaur, "it took me by surprise." The digitized bass in his voice rattled the walls, "I could not prevent it."

"That was a clever ambush, let me tell you. I was not expecting you to come out from behind the door like that. But tell me, how did my Fiver not pick up on you."

"A new unit, powered by Void." Minotaur gave out a harmonized wheeze. "It sends out a false signal of procrastination on my part. It gives the impression that I will attack much too late to concern any oracle, at least in the manner that most players use their oracles. Your holo-rabbit detected the ambush, but thought it would be occurring three hours into the future." Minotaur slumped.

"I’m impressed, and surprised I didn’t have to yield to you this time." Paladin took a few steps closer to Minotaur, "Now if you don’t mind, I would like my prize now," he said. From a compartment in his chest, Minotaur removed an apple sized ball of twine, which he reluctantly handed over to Paladin. "I’ll catch you in the hub," he said as he began his way out.

"Another time," Minotaur groaned.

Nick took his eyes away from the field of the ocular projectors and turned the knob down on the bio-feedback field. He blinked once or twice as his irises adjusted to the light of his apartment. Another new unit, he thought. Last year he was consistently up any sort of new add-on, and if he didn’t have it he was prepared to play against it. The procrastination field was a complete surprise, and after realizing the full extent of this he decided to visit the game shop on his way to work later.

Going back to the regular monitor on his computer, he checked his bank balance and credit statement. There wasn’t much beyond rent money in the bank, although there was some room left in his credit limit, between that and his ball of yarn, he could probably barter for some upgrade or another. He felt a yawn come across his chest, and decided to head off to sleep.

Chapter 3(3726)

The subway ride to Kane’s Place always took an interminable amount of time. His store was rooted in the outskirts of the suburbs. Nick always found the ride unbearable, appreciating the time only in that he could get caught up on the last sports news and gossip, with which to make small talk with Kane.

He had just unfolded his newspaper, logged into the subways transmitters, and had read two paragraphs about Toronto impending trade of Joe Sakic to Detroit for Bob Gainey when the zealot had accosted him.

She was younger looking than him, dressed in the nicer, cleaner, clothes of someone who dealt with the daytime public than Nick. Despite the conservative hemline of her skirt, and her plain black jacket, there was a provocative aura about her, something in her eyes. Nick tried to shake it off as she began to speak to him; he was perpetually sleep deprived, and had been single for too long. He noticed a badge over her left breast pocket, and emblem of a crucifix and an ouroborous intertwined with another, underneath which was engraved a name: Ahila. He couldn’t recall the exact denomination it represented. Only their reputed effectiveness for acquiring alms from parishoners.

"Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice you here," she started. "You seem to have something very important on your mind, you seem like a thoughtful person."

"I’m okay, I’m fine."

She tried to lock eyes with him.

"It’s difficult to find thoughtful people to talk to sometimes, isn’t it? Everyone is so consumed with little, petty things, and we talk and talk about little petty things when we’re really being bothered by larger, more profound things."

Nick stifled a yawn despite himself. He found himself falling for the act, becoming entranced with her voice and stare, wanting her to stay by his seat on the train. He rubbed a box on the lower corner of his paper and the sports page cleared away.

"I’m, just not sure of many things right now. I’m at a job that I wanted more than anything years ago and...."

"It doesn’t fulfil you anymore, does it? You know, I can tell you where you can start looking for true fulfilment," she said. Nick grinned, finally reminded of the multitudes of guests and callers on the show of one extreme religious bent or another. "It’s a nice thought isn’t it," she continued. "Can I show you something?"

Nick quickly glanced at the subway route above the seat and then back at the girl. He still had at least half a dozen stops.

"Alright," he said.

"Thank you," she kept her eyes turned towards him as she reached into her bag. "This is quite short, but I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have afterwards."

Nick took the viewer in his hands, he considered returning it immediately, but resigned himself to watching when he saw the Ahila’s painted expression of hopefulness. He brought the viewer right up to his eyes to engage the stereo view, and she extended a hand to press the play button on the top of the viewer. His own hand tensed as she came within a millimetre of brushing hers against it. He let out an inaudible sigh and focused his eyes to some non-existent space within the viewer.

A three dimensional slate was the first image, bearing the crucifix and ouroborous sigil of Ahila’s name badge. The slate faded, as some tinny music began to swell from the viewer’s speakers.

"We live in troubled, uncertain times," the narration began, over a series of stills of a cityscape. "Tried and true wisdom of the past, doesn’t apply to the then unfathomable situations of today. Likewise, much of the so-called wisdom of today that attempts to supplant our old systems, is itself without direction, and without purpose." Nick suppressed another sigh, feeling as if he had returned to work. "At the Church of Christ the Self-Annihilated, we look at the one of the most ancient and revered wisdoms of our civilisation, Christianity, with a distinct and new edge. We have vigorously revisited, reinterpreted, and debatably recreated a Christianity for our times. Our message, that it is not so important to change who you are, as much as understand who you are." The images were a montage of people, engaged in working and family life, supplemented by visuals of Church offices, which seemed to be located primarily in commercial areas; storefronts of frosted glass bearing the logo of the Church. "Jesus had a message for the poor, the afflicted, the downtrodden, and the meek. But what does he have to say to you?" With the final ‘you’ the narration’s pitch suddenly dove and then rose as the image in the viewer fluttered. Nick blinked, and the viewer spewed an intense strobe of image, the thousands of minuscule pixels inside the viewer suddenly flashing on or off, each to its own distinct rhythm. He felt his body tense, startled by the fluttering brightness, and it was five seconds before he could tear his eyes from the viewer.

"Something, seems to be broken," said Nick. He felt dizzy and ill.

"I’m so sorry." Ahila took the viewer from his hands. She observed the static, holding the viewer a distance from her eyes, and started pressing different buttons. "It’s never done that before. I don’t know what to say." She slapped the side of it slightly. Nicks head was still spinning. "Are...are you ok?" Ahila’s voice seemed suddenly sincere.

"I’ll be fine," said Nick. "It was just very bright all of a sudden, that’s all."

"I’m going to have to go back," said Ahila to herself, now jabbing at the viewer’s controls, unable to get the viewer working again. "I have to get this working."

Nick felt the subway car slow down. Ahila stood up and held onto a pole for balance during the final deceleration.

"Listen, I’m sorry. I have to go. I hope your feeling better," she said to Nick. "God, all the way back. I’ve got nothing done today."

The girl hurried off the train without another word to Nick, who straightened out his paper when his eyes felt up to reading again.

After another subway connection and a brief bus ride, Nick found himself in the west end of the city. He crossed the street to a small strip mall, and made his way into a tiny second hand shop whose entrance seemed almost invisible against the garish store front of the outlet bargain store that stood beside it. An ancient cowbell clanged as he pushed the door open. Inside the air was thick with cigarette smoke and the buzz of old appliances. Behind the counter, a man whom Nick reckoned was at least 10 years younger than he appeared stood hunched over his own paper.

"Mister Nicholas." Kane straightened himself and went to extinguish his cigarette, pausing for a moment to find a vacant square inch in his overflowing ashtray. "I can’t say it’s been that long since you’ve last been here. To what do I owe the pleasure."

"The game changes quickly Kane. Sometimes much faster than we’re comfortable with, but if we don’t keep up we start losing."

"That sounds like the old Nick talking there. Well, I’ve got a few things that you may be very interested in. If you’re interested in keeping up of course," said Kane. Nick felt him coiling up to make a pitch, and started into the hockey talk.

"Yeah, I’m interested, but I just read about the trade on the way here. Do you actually think the Leafs will actually deal for Gainey?"

"I hope so man, you see Gainey may have been a defensive forward, but he could always score more goals. I mean, next time around they could groom him as a scoring forward, and he’s a total team guy. Like I’ve told you to do before, read that old book by Dryden’s and he’ll tell you all about Gainey." Nick could see in Kane’s eyes that he’d been waiting all morning to talk about this.

"Sakic’s a big deal man, and he’s like a classic leaf now."

"Yeah, but they’ve still got Gretzky--they’re never going to trade him--and it was lack of defence that killed them in the playoffs last year. Besides, when the habs go around trading Belliveau and Gainey, what kind of sentimentality can you have?"

"I suppose so, it was just nice having that one-two combo of Gretzky and Sakic as the first lines, but they say the latest Syl Apps is ready for the number two job."

"He’s young alright, but apparently he’s totally ready," said Kane. Nick noticed the change in manner, the relaxing that always took place in the otherwise hypertense Kane. He felt like he was in game coming into the store. Kane played Parallel with the beginning of his sales pitch, playing on a hunger he knew to be present in Nick, who countered with Unity by bringing supposedly mutual concerns into the dialouge. They bantered some more. They spoke about this team and that, about trades, the possibility of grooming once power-forwards into offensive-defensemen, until Nick gently inquired about seeing some of the new goods.

"Please," said Kane, "come into my office." Nick followed him to the doorway at the back of the store, behind a ratty curtain held up with thumbtacks stuck in the arch. The back of the store appeared much like the front of it. Except most of the electronic appliances were in some state of disassembly. Kane took a seat behind a cluttered table, and lit another cigarette. Nick took a seat opposite him and cast his eye around the room. Many of the pieces that cluttered up the room seemed to swirl around in perpetuity, always getting fixed up, and subsequently canabalized for parts again. There were usually small bits of contraband of one sort or another floating about, and Nick caught sight of some data boxes behind some broken monitors that he didn’t remember.

"Those are some serious data cans over there Kane. I mean, they’ve got to have a couple of googols apiece. What are you carting around there?"

"Oh, those are just some intercepted transmissions that I managed to scrape up, I traded some stock off for them, and I’ve got someone lined up who’s interested in this information. It’s just some government spacecraft stuff, nothing you or I could really make sense of," said Kane. "But please tell me, what merchandise can I interest you in today?"

"The last game I played," started Nick, "this guy had some new kind of procrastination field. It threw off my Fiver program."

"Well you know how this works, first the oracle is released, then the counter-oracle as you’ve now seen. So..."

"The counter-counter-oracle." Nick shook his head with an ounce of resignation.

"Listen, it’s only an upgrade for the rabbit thing, or whatever you use. You won’t notice it if you don’t want to. Besides, as you’re well aware, I’m only more than happy to pass on my savings as a provider to an end user like yourself." Kane had brought out a small metal safety box through which he was now removing a series of cards. "Could you imagine where you’d be if you were paying full retail for all of this? You probably couldn’t afford it on your assistant producer salary."

"Alright, is the upgrade going to set me back much."

"Not at all, but that’s not what I wanted to show you today. Now Mister Nicholas, what would you say if I told you I had new arcanna here."

Nick tried to keep a straight face, but his eyes noticeably widened.

"I’m listening," he said. Kane held up a gold foil card. Nick could see the main glyph of an incomprehensible maze of lines and shapes. "Random," he whispered. Kane grinned. "I can’t afford a Random. I do have prizes to trade, but I know that’s not enough. What are you going to show me next, Source?" He joked hopefully.

"I’ve got to say, the only Source I’ve ever remotely hear of have come from Industry people, and usually pried from their cold dead hands. As far as this Random goes however, I am confident we can come to some terms."

"How do I know you didn’t kill and Industry guy over that? It can’t possibly be even gray market. The hub doesn’t bother taking notice of non-legit add-ons and upgrades, but arcanna has to be straight up."

"Well, this would be straight up if we were in Finland," said Kane. "Let me just say this won’t last long in my shop. School’s getting out in the next half-hour. Do you want to risk this to my afternoon rush?"

Nick felt the greed rise up in him. Random could beat Binary, Parallel or Void. The last wasn’t a big deal, but taking out the other two could fix otherwise hopeless situations. He sat down on an old stool across from Kane and took out his wallet, fishing around for the appropriate debiting cards. He knew he couldn’t possibly afford it with what he came to spend, but there wouldn’t be an opportunity like this any time soon.

"Alright, let’s see if we can work out something. Here’s what I’ve got."

Unity, trumped by Binary.

Chapter 4(5753)-2582

"So you say that these angels were able to then warn you about the fire that was going to start in your house."

"Dr Lansing, to say the least, I’m fascinated. Do you think that God wanted to save you that night? Or what did he want from you?"

"I asked the seraphim that. You have to remember though Frank, that I wasn’t in my best state of mind after the fire. It didn’t take long for the thankfulness of having my own life saved to wear off, before I became angry about losing my home and my posessions. I was angry at God, and angry at myself because I thought myself to be a non-materialistic person, and I found myself coveting the things that lost, and coveting the things that other people had. I wasn’t the kind of person that I presented myself as, and preached every week, and I believe this was a trial, intended to push me more towards being that kind of person."

"That must have been very difficult time for you, I’m very sorry."

"This took you to the hub then."

"So please tell me some more about your ministry there, what kinds of programs are you doing in the hub?"

"That sounds like essential reading to me, who doesn’t need more wisdom? I think we have some callers on the line. Would you like to take some questions Dr Lansing?"

In the control room, Miguel held up an index finger towards Nick while keeping his eyes towards Frank.

"Alright Nick, give me the distraught mother on my signal," said Miguel. He cut his hand down and Nick sent her call across the glass to Frank.

"You’re talking with the Reverend Doctor Vaughn Lansing caller. Do you have a question?"

"Oh yes," said the caller, "it’s my son. He hubs all the time, he’s a good boy, he really is, but I just worry about who he’s spending time with there, I don’t get to meet his friends there like when he was younger and_" Nick’s hand uncontrollably flinched, and the call was cut off.

"It looks like we’ve lost that caller," Frank resumed, now staring at Nick, "but she had some very valid concerns, what can you say to her, if she’s listening off the air." Nick could see him inaudibly grind his teeth. Miguel spun his chair around.

"What’s wrong with you? What was that for?"

"I...I...couldn’t....help it." Nick spat out with an effort that surprised him. He lined up another call. "Sorry Mig,"

"Sorry doesn’t get the call back Nick. Just stay frosty ok?"

The doctor finished his answer as Nick put the next call through. He balled his hands into fists and scrunched them into his lap. He thought back to before he came to work, his last minute jump onto the hub to install the Random card. He had tried to register three times and failed. Paladin, at an automated Industry machine, had tried to punch in the long Finnish access codes printed on the card. The first two attempts yielded nothing, but on the third attempt the card began to pulse slightly. He held up the card, waiting for it to create it’s coin, like any other avatar, when the pulsing grew more agitated and violent. He stared into the chaotic sigil on the front of the card and the pulsing became suddenly more agitated and frenzied. He wondered and stared, Is a primary arcanna is supposed to do this? He waited a full minute, looking at the cacophony of rays inside the card, wondering greedily if the wait was only in line with how powerful this particular chip would be, whenever it materialised. His disappointment soon outweighed his impatience when nothing happened, and he resigned himself going to work and contacting Kane later. He thought of his bank account, empty of rent money. Something would have to give, with the Random card he could win what he needed and pay the rest of his rent with credit. Otherwise, he’d have to get the card back to Kane and hope he could recover his money.

"Go ahead caller."

"Please go ahead caller, Reverend Lansing is right here."

"Well, I’m listening."

"Me too Frank," the guest chimed in, "please tell me more."

"Thank you very much for the call."

Nick pressed on, meticulously plugging in call after call, unable to remember when he last had to concentrate so hard at his job. Sleep would be the answer. He’d try to send a message to Kane before leaving work about his difficulties with the Random card, and pick up any replies when he woke up in the afternoon. He felt another tremor come over his right hand, and quickly held it in his left.

Chapter 5(7103)-1232

Conner and Denton made their way through the undergrowth, making slow progress through the forest.

"I can’t see anything," said Conner. "Let’s get rid off some of this mess. Let me get out my flame-thrower and we’ll get there way faster."

"Easy man," scolded Denton, "We’re trying to stage a surprise attack, remember? Don’t sweat it, you’ll get to light it up soon enough."

"Bah. You know it will just be an out and out fight in the end, the surprise factor is overrated."

"Surprise can make all the difference."

The pair moved on. The environment seemed suspended at just past twilight, and there was a faint luminescence that flowed between the trees. Conner was dressed in fatigues, various items of equipment and weapons strung up in his webbing, while Conner wore a black dress suit, his shoes stepping awkwardly across the ground. Between the branches, he could see the brighter constellations perpetually beginning to sparkle. He then heard a sound, and brought his attention back from the sky.

The sound of rustling brush from off the path caught had both their attentions. Denton whispered.

"Something there, something small."

"Stay still," hissed Conner. He peered into the darkness. "It’s a....it’s a rabbit."

"Let me smoke it."

"Shhh! Don’t speak again until I tell you to. I’ll fix it." Conner tapped on his watch. Void, he thought. The dark circlular tattoo on his right hand tingled slightly. "Now Dent, the rabbit won’t be making any more problems for us. We’re just going to follow it back to it’s home and get the jump on whoever is there. Now lock on the rabbit show me what kind of tracker you are."

Denton’s expression fixed, and he started off their path towards the rabbit, which began scurrying back through the undergrowth. Denton picked up his pace after the rabbit, with Conner a few paces behind him.

They travelled like that for five, maybe ten minutes, hurrying through the woods when Conner caught sight of lights between the tree trunks.

"Hold up," he said to Denton. "There’s the clearing, that’s the place. Now, you go over to the left about thirty yards and start fire throwing, when he comes out after you. I’m going to make my move. Go on my mark." Denton nodded silently. Conner scanned to his left and right twice more, and took a deep breath. "Alright, mark."

Denton took off. Conner went the opposite way, towards the clearing. With a tremendous gush of igniting liquid and a flash of light, Denton’s flame-thrower erupted into the woods. Conner felt his gut tense. In the middle of the clearing was a small stone tower. No more than 10 meters around and 5 meters high, it was shorter than most of the trees in the woods. He waited until he saw the silhouette of a figure coming out of the tower towards the growing blaze to make his move. In the shadow of the trees he ran along the edge of the clearing until he came within striking distance of the figure. Binary, he thought as he ran out and swung his fist into the figure’s back pushing him forward into the fire. As the figure toppled into a flames Conner suddenly froze. There was no sensation around the Binary symbol tattoo upon his hand, there had been no countermove. When the prone figure in front of him began to catch fire he realized that he had just killed an animated scarecrow, a dumb straw golem. As Denton released further gusts of flame onto the woods, Conner turned around to see his actual opponent was almost upon him. Binary, he thought as ducked and made a low sweeping kick. The opponent played the same, jumping over the kick and pulling his punch.

He had two arcanna to play, three or four if he stopped running Denton or the Procrastination field. He sprung to his feet and swung his fist again towards the new figure. Fractal. He made out the same glyph as he’d just played, illuminated slightly on the armour of his opponent, again a stalemate. He thought for a fraction of a second.

"Return!" He screamed at Denton, before feeling the return the Unity arcanna to his hand. He turned back and launched himself his opponent with a high kick. Parallel.

Conner watched from the corner of his eye, and his attention slowed as he saw the armoured man duck under the kick and plant his own uppercut square on to his chest.

"Unity," Conner vaguely whispered as the air was knocked out of him. He laid there a few seconds, going through the last few moves in his head.

"I think you owe me a big prize now," said Paladin. "But once again, I will agree to a double or nothing match next week."

"I thought I could trick you. Thinking I’d play Unity because I recalled it."

"Well, all I had was Unity. I figured I’d parry again or beat you if you played something else."

"What was with your rabbit? I jammed it but you still got the jump on me with your golem."

"Well, don’t tell anyone but I’ve got the crack on the latest oracle-buster." Nick continued. Conner got to his feet and the two began walking, the twilight silently reversed itself and the aura of afternoon began to fade into their surroundings. Nick found himself smiling for the first time since leaving work After tense matches against players like Minotaur, or prizeless tests against bots and AI programs, having a friendly rivalry with someone like Conner was a strange pleasantry.

"Right on. I didn’t even want to break out the oracle buster, but I couldn’t figure how else to get an advantage in that situation. Did you like the fire?"

"The fire was great, you totally should have got me in the fire. In fact, you totally should have had me after that last move. If you’d played Unity and we spared again. I’d have probably returned Fiver for Void, played that, and then your Parallel would have beaten Void."

"I don’t know," said Conner, "maybe I’m just getting lazy."

"Not too lazy for tournaments I hope."

"I’m still in."

"Good, very good."

"Well it depends, are you going like that?"

"Like what?" Nick asked.

"You know, the whole Sir Lancelot get up."

"I thought you were into the get up, I’m Paladin, that comes with connotations."

"I never said anything about the name, and no one says you have to do up your avatar and your domain a certain way because of it," said Conner. "You just seem to be living out some sort of childhood fantasy that’s all." Nick stopped walking for a moment and Conner also paused.

"No," Nick started. "When I was little, I wanted more badly than anything else to be a hockey player. Did I ever tell you that?" Conner shook his head. The two resumed their pace. "I was little, they gave me a small set of plastic sticks and pucks to play with, and when I was old enough, I had a real graphite one, and I’d play some pick up games on the street with kids on my block. I’d watch every game they’d let me, and I’d watch tape in my room with the sound off after they’d sent me to bed."

"You’ve never talked about hockey before," Conner added quietly.

"Well one afternoon, I don’t remember quite how old I was. I was in front of the monitor in my room, watching some game. I think it was from some Stanley Cup final, one between LA and the Islanders, where Marcel Dionne had two consecutive hat tricks in two games or something. Anyways, my Mom came in as I was watching, studying everything my mind could take in about how they were playing the game, and I blurted out to my Mom that when I grew up I wanted to be a hockey player. More so, I wanted to be the best hockey player there was, or at least one of the greater ones."

"Oh," Conner’s voice went down in pitch. "I think I’m starting to understand."

"Yeah, so Mom explains to me then, that if you want to be a hockey player, you have to be born a hockey player, and to be born one, you have to have been a hockey player before you died."

"So you got the lesson that day, you can be anything you want in life as long as it’s not a professional athlete or military ground personnel."

"Pretty much, and I asked if I was just a clone, and she said no, and then she told me about...well, you know." Conner nodded.

"Sometimes, when I was upset, I imagined I was the long lost clone, escaped or smuggled out of one of those eugenics labs where they breed the other athletes. Maybe I was really Doug Gilmour or Maurice Richard."

"From what I hear, they’ve never been able to recreate Patrick Roy, the clones just keep breaking down and going crazy."

"Same with Ken Dryden, except they all go off into other careers."

"Did you read his book?"

"The Game or the experimental fiction one?"

"Either."

"Yes. Anyway, I rather lost interest in hockey after that, it felt too frustrating. I could never live up to it. "

"Listen," said Conner. "When are going to take some vacation time and come visit me? I keep telling you that you’d love Malaysia. There’s not many cultured spots left in the world but this is one of them, and believe you me, it’s comfortable."

"What would we do? Play in the Hub?"

"And other things. You know, hit the town, go meet people, see some culture, go to parties. Don’t you do those things at home?"

"No, I work night shifts remember? That’s how you and I have such a functional relationship, you’re an insomniac in the Pacific Rim and I’m a night shift worker in North America. We can hang out in the hub if we want to run into other people, why travel?"

"Just a suggestion. Thought you might be interested."

"Well, I am interested. I just don’t know how possible it is, for the next while anyway," said Nick. "I’ve got some money tied up in some upgrades that have proven to be a bit problematic, and getting the merchandise or my money back might get difficult."

"Tying all your money in upgrades Pal? What are you doing, buying from the Industry?"

"No, of course not. I’m not going cad on you, but I got another arcanna." Nick watched Conner’s eyes widen slightly. "A Random. I don’t have it working yet. I think something’s wrong with the access codes that let it get installed. It’s Finnish."

"Does..." Conner started, "does he have any more? You could courier it. I would repay you. I would even be happy to give you a little something else for your trouble."

"We couldn’t get arcanna across customs if we tried, and I don’t think there’s anymore."

"Please check, for me. As for customs, I do have some means at my disposal to handle that. I’ll send you instructions if you send me a message saying that the card is available."

"Again, I’d like to remind you that it’s not working yet, but I’ll check for you. Now what are you interested in paying if there’s any left?"

"If you can afford it, I certainly can," said Conner.

"Fine. So a rematch next week then? Usual time?"

"That would be great."

Conner stopped walking, and turned to find a doorknob sticking out of a tree, he opened it, and gave a nod to Nick before entering the portal back into the bazaar of the Hub. Nick waited a minute before breaking out, thinking of what he was going to say to Kane. When he found himself in front of his terminal once again he looked at his clock. If he left right away, he could catch Kane before he closed up for the day. Nick hurried.

Chapter 6(9115)-2554

Suddenly compelled for the first time in years, Jasmine took the painting out of her storage closet. Varying shades of blue, in uneven stripes rode up and down the canvas. Although the painting looked as if it could have arisen out of a sudden random act, she knew that it was the deliberate work of someone who could neither paint abstractly nor formally with any degree of comfort. She sighed when she thought about it, and wondered again why she still kept the memento around, even if it was mothballed in her closet the better part of the time. It is difficult to throw away something that’s unique, she thought, and I don’t have many unique things.

She leaned the painting against the wall, wondering again why she wasn’t moving on to something else. She thought of the chapters that needed finishing on her thesis, and of the other work she’d been neglecting. She paused for another second, crouched over the painting, thought of him for one more moment, and then got up. It was late in the day, and the lab would be less crowded, but she still had to leave soon.

On the subway, she unfolded her notepaper, and began to look at the memo she’d been sent the night before: Observations of Frequency Analysis of Data Retrieved from Probe FTL-S4A. She scanned through the report looking for any immediate signs of out of the ordinary signals. Silly Paramecia, and lots of them... She would go through the data, like all the other packets of data retrieved from the various probes to Alderbaran. She would look for language, for poetry, for arguments, for song, for war, for stories, for anything resembling intelligence. It would just be the sound of giant paramecia like creatures, vibrating their cilia to produce cacophonies of noises. Human kind wanted to find sentience somewhere other than earth, and at the moment Alderbaran was the most probable source.

The planet had been discovered decades ago, and after finding that nothing was emanating from it as far as radio frequencies, the first of many probes was dispatched to look for life on it’s surface. Sure enough, they found the bugs. Alderbaran was covered with giant paramecia. They were a seemingly homogenous species who spent the bulk of their time wandering across the muddy surface, eating some of the plant life that also existed there, and then continuing to wander. Never had any been observed, mating, fighting, dying, hatching, or anything but wandering, eating, and making their strange variety of noises.

Probe after probe had been sent to the ‘discovery of the millennium ’, to gather footage of the bugs walking around, eating, and to tape hours upon hours of noises from the planet. Each time the transmission of a probe was scheduled to return the world braced itself for the revelation of sentience, and each time the cry of wolf sounded, more of the media and public attention turned itself back towards earth. Sure, another transmission back from another planet, probably just bugs scuttling around again. Boring, boring, paramecia. It took a while for it to sink in, the shine of being the first non-vegetable extra terrestrial species being a thick shiny veneer, but the paramecia of Alderbaran were certainly among the more boring possibilities for life, at least when compared to the bio diversity of earth. It did pose an intriguing question, why so little diversity on Alderbaran? Or why so much diversity on Earth? But the theoretical issues held little interest for the public at large.

Jasmine and others had discovered though, that despite the public’s fleeting taste for extra-terrestrial life, there would be little effect upon the academic significance of Alderbaran. More importantly, Academia would give the same long term academic support to demystifying the riddle of Alderbaran bugs as it would a "Finnegan’s Wake". There was forever the promise of finding some degree of sentience with the bugs. Just the fact that they made different noises without immediate stimuli seemed an indication of that. Jasmine flipped through the frequency analysis of some old data. I work at watching the most expensive ant farm in recorded history, she thought.

The twitching on his hand had become noticeably worse. He hadn’t noticed it while hooked up to the hub, but it distracted him continually while on the subway, not allowing him to read. Not that he planned to go into the sports banter with Kane, this visit was a strictly logical: Return my money, or replace the card (and sell me another for me friend if you have one), thought Nick. It was simple, and Kane was most likely to be serviceable to either of those requests.

He waited, rocking back and forth in his seat on the subway, feeling sicker with each passing stop. He pined for the hub, wishing that he could have all the sensations of motion it granted, without actually having to put his body in motion, experiencing all the upsets that came with it. He tried to sleep again to pass the time between all the stops between his home and Kane’s, and eventually succeeded. He found himself napping in the most shallow of fashions, surfacing every time his neck began to relax, his head snapping forward suddenly, or when the train came to a stop. Between the breaths of consciousness however, he lightly dreamed. He was Paladin again, but instead of going into domains of others, fighting and winning or losing prizes, he was painting. In a small room in a tower like the one of his domain, he used the arcanna to create designs on a large octagonal canvas. Fiver sat in the corner of a room, and offered some encouragement, and tried to interpret the brush strokes made by the Binary and Parallel cards when asked. Needs Random, thought Paladin. Frustrated.

Nick prodded himself awake when he recognised the octagonal mauve tiles of his stop. I haven’t painted in years, he thought.

He pushed on, past the transfer and on the bus once again, and started hurrying across the street to the strip mall. A group of younger people stood in his path, walking the same way as himself, but in the slower fashion a group engaged in communicating with each other. He bounced from foot to foot for half a second, wondering how best to get around the group. He then paused as he noticed the back pack of one of the school kids, and found himself staring at the patch sewn into it. It was of a rabbit, standing on its hind legs, ears propped up, listening for danger. He glared, furtively for another moment, then suddenly calmed worked his way around the group and into the parking lot in front of Kane’s store. Then he saw the van, it was the Industry, and they were going into Kane’s. This was no friendly visit, the Industry vans rarely—if ever—made friendly visits. Kane had been running his operation for some time now, and he must have got sloppy or careless or both. Nick had heard that they were using younger and younger undercover agents to look for black and grey market dealers like Kane. He was likely stung after panning some lo-grade arcanna over to some kid on the after school rush.

They had finally caught up to him. It was over for Kane. He could hear things going on inside the store, voices, and it sent his heart racing. Frozen where he stood, he put a quivering hand into his pocket and felt the malfunctioning Random card. No, he thought, I can’t be here, I can’t be seen here or they will take me too. They’ll take everything of me from the hub and I’ll be meat, I’ll have to start again and I can’t afford to buy from the outlets.

He inhaled and exhaled quick shallow breaths, then he turned and ran.

Chapter 7(10354)-1315

"So Ms Keeter, where were you living when the aliens first contacted you?"

"Of course, Shag Harbour has quite a history when it comes to documented encounters with extra terrestrials doesn’t it?"

"I don’t think I can tell you how much mail I still get with that stamp Ms Keeter. But please, tell me a bit about your travels, how long were you with the aliens?"

"That’s because of the travel speed being so close to the speed of light isn’t it."

"I’d have never guessed that from your head shot."

"So would you say the aliens were fast learners?"

"Did you ever get any indication of why the aliens wanted you to teach them English?"

"That’s fascinating."

"I’m never one to balk when it comes to acknowledging the foolishness of humans Ms Keeter. I think that we as humans have to look at stories like yours, and try to see the example of wisdom being set by these aliens, and try to aspire to it ourselves."

"We certainly can Ms Keeter."

Nick sat in his chair, more uncomfortable than the previous night. Miguel had already commented on what a sack of crap he looked like, and ordered him to visit a walk-in clinic on his way home, and too call in sick if he felt the same the next night.

"We can always get an intern to stay up late and cover for you Nick." Miguel had said to him. "Don’t kill yourself for this, if you need sleep, stay home and sleep."

Nick thought silently about the envelope currently making its way to Malaysia, carrying the defective Random card. The move was made in a panic, Conner never had to know that it was the same card. If he demanded a refund should the card not install for him, it would at least be past the first of the month and Nick would have bought himself some time to get the money together to pay him back. Conner had money, at least that’s impression he had tried to make every time the subject came up between them. Nick could probably win the money he needed, but realised that the window of opportunity as an above average player would start to shut as long as he didn’t have a supplier for add-ons and upgrades. The city was full of dealers, but build even the tense rapport he had with Kane was a process that took time, and frequent patronage. He looked across the glass at Frank, still engaged with the East Coast author. Frank smoked and nodded, as always, gently prodding for more information, never critical or skeptical, forever prompting callers and guests to build onto and add to whatever story or experience caused them to phone up or write a book. Telepathic shellfish, faces of the messiah found in cartons of ice cream, people followed by stealth helicopters after visiting the crash sites of UFOs, spiritual ancestors who whispered lottery numbers into the ears of the wise and patient. he listened to it all, night after night. How real are you Frank, thought Nick? What would it take to push you into the realm of the skeptic? What would you have to hear? He tried to remember when he’d last seen Frank beyond the confines of the sound room. He arrived before Nick and Miguel got to work, and would leave only after the two of them were done each morning. Nick also couldn’t think of where else he’d ever seen the brand of cigarettes Frank smoked on sale. What purpose is he serving?

Frank soon wrapped up the segment and Miguel held up his hand to cue Nick.

"Okay, we’re cutting for commercials in five, four, three..." His hand made a little zero when Nick started the commercial feed. Void.

Chapter 8(11365)-304

It didn’t take long for Nick to decide that the wait at the walk in clinic was far worse than the subway by any stretch of the imagination. The subway, however long the ride, at least gave one the sense of progress, of motion and travelling. Sitting in the clinic waiting for one’s name to be called was pure uncut tedium. Especially when one had to wallow amidst the cumulative tension of all the other patients waiting to see medics, each understandably believing their own condition was the most worthy of attention.

He unfolded his paper, and loaded up the latest gossip columns, filling his head with the details of movie castings and big budget deals. Growing tired of it after a few minutes, he searched and scanned the news, looking for anything about the Industry. There was no mention of the raid on Kane’s shop the day before. There was often little or reporting on the piracy of hub ware. Despite the scale of the problem, the Industry chose the stance that to give publicity to it was to encourage copy cats to set up shop. Still, there were such larger dealers than Kane, even locally, and Nick was puzzled as to what he did to garner such attention. The Random arcanna? Possibly, but even that was small by other dealers’ standards.

He kept reading, then feeling the exhaustion begin to come over him in waves, he put the paper down in his lap. Nick was just about to nap when the attendant called his name.

Inside the examination room, the medical technician asked him some questions as he calibrated his equipment. Nick described his symptoms, the tremors, the odd stutter from the night before, and mentioned his shift work. She injected a needle of tracing fluid into him and lined up her scanner as to examine his head. Soon Nick found himself laid down on the examination table, the imager moving up and down his body.

"Well, you certainly could go for some more sleep, I’m no doctor or anything but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt."

"Tell me about it," said Nick.

The scanning continued for another minute, and then there was silence as the machine stopped, and the med tech began examining the data. Nick turned his head to watch her, noticing the emblem on her uniform, a circle with a cross or X. Unity.

"Now this is going sound really weird," began the med tech, "but according to the data I have here, you’ve come down a mild case of Crackerjack. Nothing we can’t handle with some photo-therapy but its Crackerjack all right."

Second(11928):

Fractal / Random

Chapter 9(11845)+176

"No, No...Nick: Stay Home. I don’t care what they gave you or told you to watch. If you came into contact with something that’s supposed to be dead as small pox I don’t think you should be in the studio. Can you imagine what would happen if Frank got Crackerjack?"

"Alright," said Nick. "I’ll take a night off, I just don’t want to get to used to sleeping at night."

"It’s a lot easier to replace you than Frank, I don’t think I need to remind you of that. He’s the one the listeners hear, the one they feel connected to. You, even me, we don’t matter as much."

"We just don’t know Nick. Please just relax, go play your hub games or something, I’m sure there’s a whole suite of you’ve never met because they go on when you’re at work or in bed."

"Just get some rest Nick. We’re only dealing with that guy who talks about hyper realities brought about by weird vibrations. Frank’s read the book backwards and forwards and he’ll keep him so busy that there’ll be almost no time for calls anyways," said Miguel, who shortly hung up.

There certainly was much Nick could do with some time off: Hub, sleep, hub, sleep... There used to be more, he thought, there used to be other things he knew wanted to do if he ever had the time.

Jasmine had set up in the lab, getting the displays up of segments of the frequency analysis. She ran repeated scans over the segment. Looking for patterns, repetitions of single frequencies, uniform changes of pitch, anything resembling logic. The sample however, was like everything else that had come back from Alderbaran, utterly random and chaotic. No amount of prior sequencing could seem to determine any noise, or even the nature of a series of noises. The beetles seemed to move around, forever garbling random nonsense. Jasmine was forever trying to prove otherwise. Structure was just a matter of one’s point of view. Look at an object from close enough up, under magnification, and the smoothest surfaces revealed jagged imperfections and seemingly crazy designs. The Alderbarans were possibly the similar to that phenomenon, perhaps their linguistics operated on a scale that outstripped our human comprehension. Maybe for the hundreds of hours a single probe would record them, there was barely the fraction of a syllable recorded and sent back to Earth. Maybe, thought Jasmine once, the Alderbarans spend the whole of their life, desperately uttering one single word.

Jasmine paused, remembering the thought. Tearing away from her work for a moment, she leaned over her terminal to type a brief message to her advisor, but found an unread message waiting for her. The subject line read "Alderbarans on Radio", and she saw that copies had been sent to several of her colleauges.

Hey everyone,

Just a reminder that on Frank Gribner’s "Gribner After Dark" show

tonight will feature a supposed expose on the government’s secret

studies on Alderbaran. I am not sure to what extend academia

is indicted (if at all). But I think it would be in any one of your

best interests to listen to the show tonight, as there may be questions

to be answered tomorrow, even if they are from "concerned" members

of the public. We may have our differences as far as interpretation

and anthropology go, but we can all agree on and support the policy

of full disclosure and sharing of information that we have observed

during this historical time for science. As homo-sapiens, we’ve

conducted ourselves quite finely in the face of this new species, and

we shouldn’t let those with preposterous allegations take away from

this.

Sincerely,

Ed Kung

Dr Kung was always a sensitive to the media relations, thought Jasmine. He’d also racked up nearly a half-dozed publications about Alderbaran during his tenure, and was likely not anxious to see some conspiracy theorist dip into the small market of Alderbaran books with some outlandish notions on what had been by-the-numbers science expeditions. She remembered meeting him once, at a conference mixer, bellyaching to an assembled group around the punchbowl when his "Semiotics from Space" book had been trumped on the non-fiction list by an expose of famous dead celebrities who happened to be werewolves and other lycanthropes.

"It’s so arrogant, I can’t stand it," he said. "What really gets under my skin though, is that we don’t just lose sales to pseudo science clap trap from the sheep on drugs who want to read that kind of drivel, but we lose out to people who might actually possess the cerebral cojones to grasp the kinds of things that we’re writing. They go out and buy the junk stuff when they get angry, so they can read it cover to cover and de-bunk it. I’ve done it myself once or twice before I figured out better, and I tell you, it fucking kills me."

Jasmine made a note of the time and station of the show. Didn’t he used to listen to that show all the time, she thought about the painter, he just couldn’t get enough of alien cover ups, conspiracy theories and what not. It was the second time today, Jasmine thought a second longer and returned to work.

Chapter 10(12747)-2256

In the hub, Paladin moved fitfully. Although the surroundings were familiar in the bazaar there were enough unfamiliar avatars to make him uneasy. He declined a few challenges as he moved though. He’d felt a lack of confidence since the incident with the Random card (aside from his friendly match with Conner of course) and with the Crackerjack virus having been in his head, he felt more nervous about his reaction time. The bazaar seemed to be at its usual buzz of activity for the time of day. The only thing that was stood out in his mind was a small group of missionaries from the First Church of the Hub, attempting to rouse passing gamers into arguments about the supposed spiritual consequences of hub activity. A few were biting though, and Paladin eavesdropped as he walked by.

"You’re absurd, none of this is real, and nothing I do here matters. It wouldn’t be fair to judge me on what I do here. That doesn’t make sense."

"Brother, you’re not judged not so much for what you do, but what’s in your heart. If you wish ill on people, and to hurt and take from people, then your soul is stained."

"If I truly wished to hurt people, I wouldn’t be here at all, I’d hurt somebody in meat-space."
"I’m trying to make you understand Brother, I really am...."

He did want to game however, especially with the time off to spend, but the only option was going solipsistic, which Paladin found particularly distasteful. There were lots of players who spent their whole gaming lives on the hub, never engaging or challenging others. Paladin wondered how many there were, how large the shadow-hub of those who made use of the environments, living out fantasies by wrestling with the artificial, living in their own made up stories, never measuring them to the perceptions of another.

Paladin did have someone to talk to however, which had brought him on the hub. He guided Paladin through the bazaar, then into a small tent, and into a door in the bottom, hidden under a table. Once in the passage underneath the bazaar, he walked until he reached another trap door in the ceiling. Going through this, he found himself in the base of a tunnel stretching upwards as far as he could perceive, accompanied by a single ladder. Paladin began to climb. He continued for a half hour without pausing, when he reached the top of the ladder he had arrived at the top of an impossibly tall tower. In the distance he could see a cluster of multicoloured clouds and his destination. As the wind picked up around him, he knew to let himself to, and let himself be carried upon it.

Glancing downward, he could see the ground slip away, he’d felt the weightlessness before, but it surprised him how frightening it was each time, and how exhilarating. That was the way the clouds wanted it however, they were always looking for more to join them. Soon he could see nothing in front of him, or behind, or underneath him, and the sensation of movement from the wind had died down. He had passed through the gateway above the bazaar, and was now in their domain. He twisted around in the fog, which began to swirl around him.

You are being-Paladin?

"Yes. I’ve come to see 56."

He is someplace.

"Can he be here?"

Possibly. Does being-Paladin wish for true serenity? Is that what brings him?

"Perhaps eventually, but I need information, I’ve talked to 56 before and I believe he can help me."

This is named 90.

The cloud was an effervescent blue. There wasn’t much Nick could to in order to move himself around the domain, only to hope that the desired collective would hear him and attempt to integrate itself in his vicinity.

"Have you been near 56 lately? Have you heard him?"

56 has stirred. Has sensed the being-Paladin.

"Is that you?"

Has the being-Paladin decided to transcend? To join and be forever integrated, and forever individual?

"56, I know you sometimes still watch the rest of the hub, I know almost all of you do from time to time." Nick could see that besides the blue cloud around him that there were wisps of magenta coming into his view. With the change in the colour the voice seemed to change slightly as well.

There is much to be pondered from the hub, much to be learned. We have much to share, for the truest knowledge comes from meditating upon the nature of ourselves free of distraction, which we do readily.

"I want to know if you’ve seen or heard anything about any bio-data viruses."

Strange, that we all would live to see the disease that affects the horrible flesh but is carried though the digital. Why is the being-Paladin concerned?

"I caught a case of Crackerjack, I’m trying to find out where it came in the hub."

This isn’t the concern of 56, we are past what such disease can do.

"No, I think you’re going to help me, and you’re going to keep helping me 56."

Again. Being-Paladin will give his threats again? Is it challenging to another game in the maya? It should know by now the collective no longer engages in the games. What is the purpose, to contest, to beat and be beaten? Does it bring one closer to the truth?

"I live in maya? I think that’s a little bit of pot/kettle/black for you isn’t it? You know I can find your body, that I saw it once in the hospital. I’ll find it again and I’ll put a pillow over your head I swear. I know you all know far more than you’ll ever let on, and even if you say you’re telling me everything there’s always something pithy that gets left out."

56 and others are past concern. The time in the collective is limited, but has been valuable, has revealed enough truth, and truth in the understanding of other beings, that this life can be thought as full. Being-Paladin will be aided however, not due to threat, but that being-Paladin is obviously so concerned that it feels it must threaten. 56 will aid out of compassion and love, and desire that being-Paladin will one day choose to understand that compassion and consider joining collective. All we seek is truth, and to aid our seek for truth we seek the freedom from the bodies, the anchors that prevent us from taking greater and more profound journeys.

Nick sighed and felt utter contempt for himself, he didn’t even know why he threatened 56. What was so important that he’d threaten a (now) old man with his life, one who’d found his own peace at that. Perhaps there was envy involved, all the collective were people that through some means or another, chose to stay in the hub to the neglect of their bodies. 56 used to be a man, or rather still was, although he hadn’t been unhooked from the hub for decades now. Nick had found him when he had gone to the hospital to visit--somebody, he couldn’t remember why he had gone there--and saw 56 in the coma ward, a man hooked up to hub ware. He had asked a few questions, and decided to track him down in the hub later, and eventually had found his way to the collective.

"I’m, I’m really sorry. Maybe I’ll just go 56, I didn’t mean that."

There are many things in hub which go beyond control of Industry, many things done in shadow-hub that sometimes get out. There are places in the solips where dark places of imagination have been permitted to fester and spawn, Industry cannot stop that. Disease which utilizes the hub is part of this. Think about what’s been going through the eyes of being-Paladin or flesh being, and there is the disease, and beware what that disease could mean. You are not in a position to be fully objective of your self if you have been afflicted. 56 will watch for you. Go in peace. Until we all are liberated from the flesh.

"Alright, I’ll get going, listen I think it was about the games, I’ve just spent a lot of time in the hub and it’s hard to hear something like that without getting defensive."

In peace.

Paladin left.